Coaching Genius or Just Genies

For some reason which is impossible to decipher, let alone explain, Americans seem to regard NFL coaches as just about the highest manifestation of modern intelligence. Yet most fans aren't sufficiently sophisticated about the game to recognize the many nuances of coaching stratagems as they unfold before us. We tend to glaze over when John Madden goes to the chalkboard and settle for judging coaches by the bottom line. The play worked or it didn't. The team won the game, or it didn't.

But every once in a while a coaching strategy is so transparently brilliant that we are capable of appreciating and even reveling in all the intricacies of the Xs and Os. Such was the case in the 2002 Super Bowl, when Bill Belichick's New England derailed the heavily favored St. Louis Rams' "Greatest Show on Turf." The Patriots jammed the speedy Ram receivers at the line of scrimmage, whacked them crossing the middle and neutralized with sheer physicality what was then regarded as the highest evolution of modern offensive football.

That victory propelled Belichick toward the stature he now holds as the reigning genius of the New Millennium NFL. And Rams coach Mike Martz, who has never made a secret of his very high opinion of himself, took a decided dip-now he is, at best, at best a minor god. The relative standing of these two men in the coaching pantheon provided the backstory when the Patriots recently met the Rams for the first time since Super Bowl XXXVI.

What was most striking about the pregame chatter was how intent the Rams seemed on historical revisionism. To a man, or so they said, they didn't appear to recall anything super about the Patriots effort in that championship-just how much they bent the rules by holding and bumping in the defensive secondary.

The implication was clear: with the NFL's new get-tough policy on illegal contact in the secondary and the referees duly alerted to New England's cheating tendencies, Martz's genius would have free rein. Moreover, the Rams had the added advantage of playing on their home turf, where the team was 15-1 with Marc Bulger as quarterback, as well as an extra bye week to plot their revenge. And if all that wasn't quite enough, the New England secondary was crippled. Martz's vaunted passing attack would be feasting on a defensive backfield that included: rookie Randall Gay, who didn't even start for LSU last season; a second youngster with the delightful name, Earthwind Moreland, whose career highlight was an interception for the Duesseldorf Rhein Fire against the Berlin Thunder in World Bowl X, and Troy Brown, New England's veteran wide receiver who was being asked to do double duty on both sides of the ball. The rout was surely on.

Indeed it was. The Patriots outplayed and outsmarted the Rams in every facet of the game, scorching St. Louis 40-22; it was a victory that should have been as humiliating for a coach as any I have witnessed. But it left the humility-challenged Martz grousing about a marginal roughing-the-passer call and pointing his finger at his team's lack of preparedness, especially for a trick play on a fake field goal. There's no reason to believe Belichick had any added motivation beyond righting his team after its 21-game winning streak was snapped in Pittsburgh the previous week. But for a man who regards a hiccup as an excessive display of emotion, Belichick was grinning ear-to-ear after the game.

I don't envy my colleagues whose task it is to cover Belichick on a regular basis. He finds consorting with the press about as pleasant and useful a duty as does our president and seldom provides much elucidation on what reporters themselves have witnessed. Injuries are treated like military secrets-only more closely held. His assistant coaches aren't allowed to talk to reporters and his star players are pretty much in lockstep (and lockjaw) with the program, leading The Boston Globe football writer to decry the Pats and their control-freak ways as the "Stepford" team.

It is a funny but inappropriate metaphor. The ladies of Stepford were in the throes of sinister forces, while the Patriots players have willingly bought into a successful system that is revolutionizing the game in a fashion that hasn't been seen in the NFL since the Bill Walsh heyday with the 49ers back in the '80s. Walsh's revolution is usually neatly and inaccurately summed up as the West Coast offense, while Belichick's impact is difficult to describe with any catch phrase; it is however profound.

But in a me-first era in professional sports, he has somehow resurrected old-fashioned notions of team and made them paramount. Early in the Patriots' first Super Bowl season, when they didn't yet have a winning record and weren't remotely regarded as contenders, New England became the first team to drop individual pregame introductions. It sounds hokey, but it clearly represented a genuine commitment that wasn't apparent throughout much of the league. Nobody on the Patriots treats touchdowns, or any other on-field accomplishment, as the first step in a marketing scheme.

If that sounds like a modest accomplishment, it truly isn't. Still, Belichick wouldn't be able to sustain it if he and his staff didn't back up that commitment with a level of preparedness that gives the coach unrivaled mystique in the NFL. Each week opposition coaches and quarterbacks confess that it is pretty much impossible to prepare for Belichick's Pats, since he seems to reinvent his team every single week. Looking at film and more film has long been viewed as the ultimate solution to game prep. But what happens when what you see is never what you will get?

In so many ways, Belichick is a back-to-the-future guy, harkening back to a long-gone era of two-way football. To expand his roster, increasingly a necessity given the ravages of injuries, he views each Patriot as a complete football player rather than as a specialist. Defensive linemen double as blocking backs, linebackers moonlight as tight ends and actually catch touchdown passes, wide receivers can be converted into emergency defensive backs, virtually any starter can be recruited to shore up special teams and field-goal kickers may throw passes. Not one of those ideas is entirely novel. But the wholesale approach makes the Patriots the embodiment of that favored sports cliche: the sum is greater than the parts.

Right now Belichick, too, is greater than the sum of his parts and those parts-two Super Bowl wins in three years and an NFL-record 21-game winning streak-alone are impressive. He is in the process of surpassing his one-time mentor, Bill Parcells, and most of those other coaches who were labeled "great" in their time. The next step up is to the rarified air of the coaching legend. Everything points to Belichick getting there.

Oh there is one other little tidbit I have to pass along. A couple years back after New England's first Super Bowl, a prep school classmate called him, "the smartest man I've ever met." That classmate was Governor Jeb Bush of Florida and for his intemperate remark his dragon lady mother called him on the carpet seems you aren't supposed to say anybody's smarter than your brother if said brother is president of the USA.

Hell, I don't doubt Jeb's assessment was accurate. I'd lay odds that 70% of the NFL's coaches and 60% of its players are smarter than Dubya.