Apparently Cheaters Do Win

It was announced yesterday that Bill Belicheat was voted the Associated Press Coach of the Year. I found the timing of the award rather interesting because the announcement was originally scheduled for January 12. Thanks to this article in the Boston Herald, the NFL apparently decided not to wait another week and to tell the world what we all knew already- Bill Belicheat is the coach of the year. Is their a coach of the decade award or a coach of the century award? If there is, they should just engrave Belicheat's name on it now.

What's so surprising isn't the timing of the announcment but that the voting, in my opinion, was somewhat close. Out of 50 voters, only 29 voted for Belicheat. Are you serious? It's beyond me to think that Belicheat just wrapped up the first ever 16-0 regular season and the voters don't automatically check him off as the coach of the year. Yes, I know that the Patriots were somewhat stacked on offense but can you imagine the pressure he had to deal with on the road to 16-0? Or how about motivating his players each week, knowing that after they started 8-0 that they had already wrapped up the AFC East title?

Belicheat beat out Packers coach Mike McCarthy, who received 15 votes for leading the Packers to a 13-3 record and the NFC North title. In addition, Cowgirl coach Wade Phillips and Jaguars coach Jack Del Rio each recieved two votes with Colts coach Tony Dungy and Bucaneers coach Jon Gruden each getting one vote.

Listen, I totally expect there to be a lot of hometown bias on the part of the people who vote. How else would you explain the fact that John Gruden, who coached a 9-7 team, would get one vote? Or how about Tony Dungy? The Colts lost to the Patriots this year and it looks like Dungy may have had some type of (illegal) gentleman's agreement with Jeff Fisher that let the Titans run out the clock even though the Colts could have called time out and gotten the ball back with a chance to score the winnning touchdown in their final regular season game. And I'm not sure what to think of the Packers, either. Tom Brady has been throwing to worse recievers his whole career and yet he's won three Super Bowl titles in six years. Brett Favre has a resurgence in his career and all of a sudden you feel the need to vote for McCarthy? I guess I feel like Del Rio may have been the next most deserving coach because once you get by Fred Taylor, the Jaguars aren't very deep and they still managed to win 11 games in a tough division.

It's interesting to see that since 2000, only one previous coach of the year has gone on to have his team with the Super Bowl. The year was 2003 and the team was the New England Patriots, coached by none other than Bill Belicheat, back when he was still referred to as Bill Belichick.

Since joining the Patriots in 2000, Belicheat has led the Patriots to three Super Bowl titles (no other team has more than one this century) and are 91-37 in the regular season. They've owned the AFC East title for five straight years with no fewer than 10 wins in any of those seasons.

Am I right in wondering how he has only won the award twice?

"There are three things that get better with age: good cigars, red wine and to me it looks like coaches who have the ability," Patriots owner (and one shirt wonder) Bob Kraft said in response to Belicheat winning coach of the year. "He's really hit his sweet spot and I'm really happy for him personally." I have no clue what Kraft is talking about in this quote. He couldn't just say congratulations or we're glad he turned out to be spineless when he shunned the Jets head coaching job or something along those lines?

Yeah, I know that there was that little thing involving the Jets, a camera and a possilbe misinterpretation of the rules by Belicheat but I can already see Rodney HGHarrison walking around playing the disrespect angle before their first playoff game because their head coach only got 29 of 50 votes for coach of the year. And you know what? I totally believe that this is exactly how Belicheat wants it. You know what else? The players will use it for motivation and demolish their first playoff opponenet.

Wild Card weekend play off picks coming tomorrow.