Bill Belichick won't coach for another decade ... right?
This is the Morning Win. Nate Scott is filling in for Andy Nesbitt for a few weeks.
During his weekly appearance on WEEI Boston sports radio, Patriots coach Bill Belichick, 67, tossed out the idea that he wouldn't mind coaching past the age of 70.
This is a somewhat reversal of a previous quote Belichick gave, in 2009, when he said he wouldn't want to follow the lead of Marv Levy, the former Bills coach who worked into his 70s.
"When I said it, maybe I didn't know what 70 felt like," Belichick said. "So I'm not really sure if that's an accurate statement today or not. At the time, I didn't feel that way. Now that I'm closer to that age, I don't know."
A radio host then said that Belichick could be a "young 80," to which Belichick replied: "That sounds good. Be a young anything."
I'll admit, I didn't see this coming. With the report that Tom Brady is putting his house up for sale, and the Patriots going all in for Mohamed Sanu, I thought maybe this was the last hurrah for Belichick. Get one more ring with Brady, then both of them walk off into the sunset. They could play golf right up until they got the call from Canton.
But now, that quote, I mean: He really wants to keep doing this, huh? There's a chance that Bill Belichick wants to coach for another five … even ten years. He's not closing the door.
Maybe this is all a smoke screen, a bit of Belichickian misdirection, and he's fully planning on hanging it up in the next season or two. And if I'm the other teams in the AFC East, heck if I'm the rest of the NFL, I would be praying that's the case.
From a neutral observer's perspective, I would be interested, purely from a sporting perspective, in seeing what Belichick could do without Brady. This year, he and his coaching staff built the best defense in the NFL, a side that's as dominant as anything we've ever seen during his tenure. The offense is doing enough to ensure they've remained undefeated.
Could Belichick keep that formula going without the greatest quarterback of all time? It would be fun to see.
Monday's Big Winner: Robot Umpires
An exchange was released from World Series Game 5 in which umpire Lance Barksdale appears to make the argument that the catcher stood up too fast, so he couldn't see if it was a strike or not. So he called it a ball. It was a clear strike. Yikes.
Quick Hits: Andy Reid, Leonard Fournette, Giants are all both good and bad
-Andy Reid is a great playcaller and just a horrible game manager.
-Leonard Fournette is cute with kids and just a terrible roaster of former teammates.
-The Giants just … well they're just bad. They made a bad, bad trade.
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