Coordinating Under Belichick Is a Recipe for Success and Failure

The NFL is nothing if not a copy-cat league.

It's not that teams are unwilling to adopt new styles of play, new coaches, or radical differences in philosophy—the game is constantly evolving—but the risks are simply too great to be the first to make the leap.

Generally speaking, this is because the NFL is nothing if not an incredibly expensive league.

The careers of coaches, players, assistants, and front office personnel all can hinge on something as simple and, ultimately random, as winning a single game.

It's a funny-shaped ball, after all, and it bounces whichever way it wants to—sometimes.

Apologies to Pacino, but the margins are so small, every team has to maximize its potential at all times. There's always some system that may truly be better, but there's rarely any time for experimentation in the league.

That's why "coaching trees" exist.

Bill Parcells has one. Bill Belichick is a part of it and has his own. Bill Walsh, of course. Marty Schottenheimer, too. Brian Billick now has one. Mike Holmgren worked under Walsh but is best known for having his own.

Different coaches have different systems and, by bringing in a guy intimately familiar with a system already proven successful at the NFL level, teams can try to tap into that success.

Other teams, unwilling to experiment by bringing in any real new blood, now just farm other teams' coaching staffs for their head coaching candidates, hoping to recapture whatever those teams have that leads them to be successful.

A coach's tree can enhance or limit their legacy as well. Bill Parcells' legacy as one of the great coaches of all time is probably sealed now that Belichick has been so successful. Holmgren (and, by extension, Walsh) had guys like Andy Reid, Jim Zorn, and others work under him who have also been successful coaches in the NFL.

Schottenheimer has never really been able to get it done in the playoffs, but his association with Super Bowl winners like Tony Dungy, Bill Cowher, and Mike Tomlin arguably fill that gap on his resume.

It doesn't make a whole lot of sense when you think about it—you're responsible for your own destiny in this league, for the most part—but it's certainly one measuring stick for determining the legacy of a coach in the NFL

Josh McDaniels is the latest branch of Belichick's coaching tree, but let's look at the highlights (well, mostly lowlights) of guys who have left his staff as coordinators to pursue opportunities elsewhere.

Romeo Crennel and Charlie Weis

The two original high-profile entrants into the coaching tree have hardly had the same success elsewhere that they had in New England, where they won three Super Bowls as a part of the Belichick trifecta.

Belichick's defensive and offensive coordinators respectively, Crennel and Weis both moved on to bigger and better things after the 2004 Super Bowl victory.

Crennel joined the Browns, where he was until this past season when he was fired and replaced with another Belichick pupil, Eric Mangini.

Charlie Weis has gotten far more press for his failures after taking over the Notre Dame football program, a program known for failing at crucial games well before Weis got there, but has since developed an inability to even get any crucial games.

Neither coordinator has been that successful, considering they were the hottest coaching prospects after publicly deciding to leave New England.

Crennel is mostly a Parcells guy, arguably, working with him at Texas Tech. In the NFL, however, both Belichick and Crennel were already in New York when Parcells was hired as head coach in 1983. Still, Crennel earned most of his league-wide recognition as Belichick's defensive coordinator this past decade.

He left New England and brought his bend-don't-break philosophy to Cleveland, where his defense learned mostly how to break, and break spectacularly. Cleveland's defense, in yards allowed per game, went from being ranked 16th in Romeo's first year to 27th, 30th, and 26th in the following three years.

Weis' fate may all but be sealed as well. Without a phenomenal turnaround this season, Crennel will be looking for opportunities elsewhere after Mangini hired Rob Ryan to be his defensive coordinator, the position Crennel offered to take if Cleveland wanted him.

Obviously, they thought that might be a tad awkward.

But for both guys, given the way the league operates, somebody will give them a chance once again.

Eric Mangini

Dubbed "Man Genius" by some in the press, Eric Mangini was the second defensive coordinator who worked under Bill Belichick in New England to earn a head coaching gig.

He has followed Belichick around the league in various capacities since being elevated from ball boy to PR assistant in Cleveland, landing with Belichick once again in Foxboro.

Mangini worked as a defensive backs coach with the Patriots, winning three Super Bowls, eventually replacing Romeo Crennel as defensive coordinator in 2005 before leaving for the Jets in 2006.

Mangini brought a lot of attitude to New York, straining his relationship with Bill Belichick along the way.

After bringing in various assistants from New England, Mangini was then responsible for reporting the Patriots' use of cameras in the "Spygate" scandal.

Unable to ever get the Jets "over the hump" and deep into the playoffs, Mangini was fired this offseason, replacing Romeo Crennel in Cleveland as head coach.

While his reputation in the league has been up and down, Cleveland has decided to gamble that maybe this former New England defensive coordinator is actually the one to lead them to the playoffs in, arguably, the best defensive division in football.

Nick Saban

Another defensive coordinator under Bill Belichick, Saban worked in the position when the two were with the Cleveland Browns. Belichick had a historically bad run with the Browns and was not brought to Baltimore with the team when they became the Ravens.

Saban moved onto Michigan State, then to LSU, had a high-profile coffee cup with Miami, and then ultimately landed in Alabama, where he is now.

While he's not necessarily a direct "pupil", Saban is arguably the most successful coach to have worked under Belichick, winning the national championship with LSU in 2003.

Saban and Belichick have remained in contact, despite always seeming to get one over on his old coach late in the season when he was in the NFL.

While Saban's opinion on college players coming from the SEC is, albeit more informed, taken perhaps less lightly than old scout Ed McKeever*, Saban is reportedly consulted on occasion by Belichick when draft time rolls around.

*Here's one of my favorite stories about the Patriots from their pre-Foxborough days:

"The scouting (pre-1971) was ludicrous. The chief scout was Ed McKeever, the old Notre Dame coach, who lived down in the bayous, and every year on his recommendation the Pats loaded up on players from obscure Southeastern schools.

McKeever's scouting reports consisted in part of circled faces in college programs that he mailed to Boston, and the Pats supplemented their late-round draft choices with players from such powerhouses as Tufts and Bowdoin. When Holovak (former coach turned GM) left, a lot of the Pats' records and papers disappeared, too, creating a sizable gap for future historians.

The word around the Pats' office is that Holovak had all the stuff stored in the trunk of his car."

Can you even imagine if Scott Pioli had a trunk full of all the old paperwork, scouting reports, and gameplans from the Patriots?

That's the league for you.

Rob Ryan

While Ryan has never reached the ranks of head coach in the NFL, you can pretend to see him every week with the Jets, as his twin brother Rex is now the head coach there.

He was never exactly a coordinator under Belichick either, but Ryan worked directly under Belichick when Bill served as both coordinator and head coach early in his tenure with the Patriots.

Still, Ryan has done what is generally considered impossible—bouncing between the college and the NFL, and finding success at both levels.

He first made the jump to the NFL with Arizona as defensive backs coach in 1995 but didn't stick there, returning to college, where he ran Oklahoma State's defense for three years.

He then came back to the NFL as the linebackers coach with the Patriots from 2000-2003, moving on to become the defensive coordinator with the Raiders and, as of this offseason, the Cleveland Browns.

While his new boss Mangini has seen more success in terms of becoming a head coach, Ryan could make the jump to join him soon, depending on how Cleveland fares over the next few seasons.

Dean Pees

If becoming defensive coordinator under Bill Belichick seems to be a fast track to success in the NFL, Dean Pees is next.

With the departure of Eric Mangini in 2006, Pees stepped up to become defensive coordinator, a position he still fills.

Pees coaching career began largely under another Belichick pupil, when he worked as defensive coordinator and linebackers coach under Nick Saban at Michigan State, before moving on to become the head coach of the Kent State Golden Flashes.

While unable to convince Kent State to change their ridiculous mascot name, Pees was successful in turning around their fortunes on the field and becoming the longest-serving head coach that program had ever had. 

Pees is one of the most experienced coaches on Belichick's staff and, while the defense has aged recently and slipped in league-wide rankings, it's likely that he'll see head coaching opportunities open up in the near future.

As a Belichick "prodigy" and, with every other defensive coordinator who's ever worked under Belichick getting a head coaching gig somewhere in the NFL at some point, you'd be hard pressed to find a more likely candidate to make the leap to head coach in the organization.

Given the track record of coordinators-turned-coaches. He may want to check out some SEC schools in the near future.

But does that track record mean Belichick's success is a one-off, due largely to having Tom Brady as his quarterback and a host of solid veterans at his disposal? Was it Scott Pioli's doing?

Or does the fact his underlings failed to recapture that Belichick aura for more than one season anywhere else mean Bill was pulling the strings all along?

That's the real question.