Captain's Sporting Heroes Part 2

Part 2 of The Captain’s sporting heroes is going to look at the legendary NFL head coach Bill Belichick.

This guy is the best tactician i have ever seen. He always seems to out-think the opposition. It is really uncanny. In fact, if you look at the Pats’ record the second time in the season that they play a team, you can see how Bill really “gets their number”.

If I was to make a football comparison, I would say he was like a cross between Alex Ferguson and Jose Mourinho. If NFL was as big as football in the UK, this guy would have a knighthood, no problem.

Bill has won three Super Bowl rings. This is actually harder than all of Sir Alex’s Premiership titles. Alex is allowed to buy and keep all the best players. In the NFL, the team changes every year. What’s more, the best team one year gets the hardest schedule the following year. And they get the last pick of the promising rookie players coming out of college (the “draft”).

To give you some sort of idea about this guy’s genius, let me tell you about one play towards the end of this year’s Super Bowl. The Giants had the ball and were milking the clock in preparation for the game-winning field goal. Bill realised that the optimal strategy was the LET THEM SCORE a touchdown! This meant that the Pats got the ball back with the chance to go and win the game.

Now the Pats didn’t end up winning the game, but this is just “mull”. Had they gone down the other end and scored, or had a hobbled Gronkowski hauled in the final Hail Mary, we would be talking about his coaching decision as the best of all time.

Bill Belichick is a hero. He is such a winner and such a great leader that he could probably walk into any coaching job in the world. I hear there might be a vacancy at Old Trafford soon. Any chance Bill?!