Is Bill Belichick not the coach we thought he was? | You Pod to Win the Game

Yahoo Sports Charles Robinson, Jori Epstein and Charles McDonald discuss Bill Belichick’s subpar record as an NFL head coach without Tom Brady at quarterback. Should Belichick not be considered the greatest coach of all time? If his teams continue to struggle without TB12 at the helm will Robert Kraft have to do the unthinkable? Hear the full conversation on the You Pod to Win the Game podcast. Subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher or wherever you listen.

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CHARLES ROBINSON: I saw a stat today-- sample size for Bill Belichick games without Tom Brady, obviously going back to the Cleveland days-- 160 games, 75 and 85. Is Bill Belichick just not a good coach without-- I mean it appears that--

CHARLES MCDONALD: Oh, come on.

CHARLES ROBINSON: No, no, no, listen. No, hear me out. If you give a coach a sample size of 160 games, which is-- what, in the olden days before it was 17 games-- that's 10 years of 16-game regular season football.

If they are going 75 and 85, they're never making the playoffs. And they're getting fired in, like, year 3 of 10. There's no way in hell anybody else gets that grace.

I am absolutely mystified why people refuse to actually look at his record without Tom Brady and go-- because you know what? Tom Brady's record without Bill Belichick is better than Bill Belichick's record without Tom Brady. 75 and 85 in 160 games is not good.

CHARLES MCDONALD: OK, it's not good, but I think-- like, when I think about Bill Belichick, it's not just what he's been able to do in terms of winning, but the impact on the game is insane. If you look at what Bill Belichick and Nick Saban-- because those guys were on the two staffs together in Cleveland back in the day-- those guys are like the godfathers of all the modern coverages that you're seeing right now.

Even going back to when Nick Saban was back at Michigan State and Bill Belichick was doing his stuff with the Giants, the impact on the game is-- it's so heavy that it's hard for me to say that he's a mediocre coach even without Tom Brady. But I will say it's definitely made me think about the impact that quarterbacks have on the game versus head coaches have on the game because when Tom Brady left Bill Belichick, I was like, oh-- I saw that as like an equal partnership in terms of their hand in success because Bill Belichick-- like, he's done a lot with, maybe, some guys that wouldn't have been starters on other teams, where he's been able to get them to come in on his defense and play pretty well.

It's a funny question because I think that that's been a lot of courses for debate over the past couple of years. But I would say my conclusion on the Tom Brady-Bill Belichick stuff is that your quarterback is probably more important than your head coach. But when they're really great like they both are, you can win seven-- or six Super Bowl titles. And sorry, Tom has seven. Bill has six. That's my cop-out answer right there.

CHARLES ROBINSON: The way he worked before is not going to work. If he does not have success, I don't think it's going to work with Robert Kraft. I don't think it's going to work with the media. I don't think-- like, you can do all that bull [BLEEP] for as long as you want-- drink the OJ, push people's recorders back, honestly kind of be a [BLEEP] to the media.

And I'm with most people on that. I don't care. If you-- whatever-- you are what you are. Everybody's different. Everybody wants to be covered differently.

The way he has handled this situation-- I watched the most recent presser-- it was after the game against the Bears where he was clearly getting pressed on why was Mac Jones--

JORI EPSTEIN: A true presser if he's getting pressed, right?

CHARLES ROBINSON: Yeah, a true presser is getting pressed. He's getting asked why Mac Jones was basically benched. Was he benched? Why was he benched? Was he benched for performance?

And he made a comment like, you know, you're going to write it the way you want to write it or what. No, people are asking to be accurate. You don't have to be a [BLEEP], OK?

And it's this whole routine. You can get away with it when you're playing really well and you're winning games and championships and you put up with all this stuff. If they just turn into a mediocre football team, if they're the third best team in the AFC East going forward, I guarantee you right now-- I will say it right now-- starting in 2023, we're going to start asking the question-- if this is still going on-- we're going to start asking the question-- OK, when does this become an issue for Robert [? Kraft. ?]