Former RB says Bill Belichick’s greatness was tied to Tom Brady

New England Patriots head coach Bill Belichick has six Super Bowl rings, but none of them have come in the post-Tom Brady era.

For that reason, former running back LeSean McCoy, who faced Belichick and Brady twice a year as a division rival with the Buffalo Bills 2015-2018, believes that the third-winningest head coach in NFL history is simply average without the three-time NFL MVP.

“I think now that he doesn’t have Tom Brady, he’s like all the other coaches; all of the other good coaches: the Marvin Lewises, the Rex Ryans,” McCoy recently said on an episode of FanDuel’s Up & Adams. “I’m just being honest. People hate for you to be real about Belichick. I think he’s a good coach, but all of the ‘greatest’ and ‘we’ve never seen anything like him,’ that’s bull crap.

“Now that Tom Brady is gone, it’s going to be a struggle every year for the Patriots to go to the playoffs. And then when they did go to the playoffs, they got blown out by a division opponent by like 30 points. I think he’s a good coach, I just don’t get overhyped like everyone else does because I just look at the stats”

Belichick had a win percentage of 77.3 in 20 seasons with Brady as his starting quarterback. But he’s won just 52.3 percent of his games since Brady left in 2020, and he has a career win percentage of just 44.7 with a QB other than Brady under center.

While New England has made just one playoff appearance in the two seasons Brady has been gone, the 45-year-old QB won his seventh Super Bowl in his first season with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, suggesting that perhaps Belichick needed Brady more than Brady needed Belichick.