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The 2017 Bill Belichick Regular Season Hoodie Report

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Hot Jacket, Opening Night Loss to KC

It was a record-breaking year for Bill Belichick and his Hoodie this season. The Hot Jacket, introduced in 2013 and Belichick recent fave, surpassed the infamous Gray Cutoff Hoodie as his most-worn game attire with the Patriots. Yes, Belichick will always be known for that Hoodie, but the truth is that he probably should be known for that short sleeved blue wind breaker just as much.

As soon as Belichick broke the record of games coached in the Hot Jacket, he didn’t wear it again the rest of the season. His record in the two faves are remarkably similar — in the Hot Jacket 43 games played for a record of 33-10, for the infamous Hoodie 42 games played for a 32-10 record. Expect Belichick to continue to add to that total next season in the early warm months.

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Bending and Breaking: A Historical B-D-B Look at the 2017 Pats Defense

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It’s driven you insane hundreds of times at this point. The Patriots defense is picked apart by a supposedly mediocre offense until miraculously stopping them in the red zone and forcing a field goal. Some seasons it feels like it happens on the first drive of every single game.

Yes, this is the Bend-Don’t-Break, a mantra muttered by football-philes like myself who have bought into Bill Belichick’s philosophy that sound coverage and tackling can make up for not attacking a quarterback with blitzers on every down. The Patriots certainly pick their spots to blitz defensive backs, but generally their philosophy is about 11 guys all doing their jobs and it’s hard to argue with the results even if the stats don’t rank them near the top of the league.

What matters most of course is points, and the Patriots have ranked below 13th in the league in points-per-drive just twice before this season.

My statistical way to breakdown the Bend Don’t Break is to rank plays- and yards-per-drive (BEND) and points- and turnovers-per-drive (BREAK). While the results in 2017 are expectedly putrid they’re not exactly in uncharted territory and there’s still plenty of time to turn things around.

Here’s a look at the Bend-Don’t-Break chart to see how the 2017 Pats stack up after five games.

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A Look Back: The 2009 Saints Massacre

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If you have yet to see the entire two-part Bill Belichick A Football Life, stop reading and watch it above immediately. Or for the purposes of this post you can just click play and it will queue right up to maybe the most infamous loss of the Belichick era thanks to NFL Films’ documenting it from the inside.

I am of course talking about the 2009 loss to the Saints in New Orleans by a glaring 38-17 score. The most famous part of this loss was recorded by the cameras as Belichick lamented not being able to get the 2009 team to play the way they needed to, that it had nothing really to do with the Saints and was mostly on the Patriots’ inability to overcome any adversity.

Eight years later we have a good perspective on the 2009 season now and I thought it would be a fun little look back at a terrible game that came in maybe the worst season under Belichick.

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Belichick Hoodie Report: Will the Hot Jacket surpass the Hoodie in 2017?

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If you saw the Hoodie Report on Patshow #104 you’d know this could be a pretty monumental year for Bill Belichick and his hoodie!

The Hot Jacket, introduced in 2013, is just nine games behind the cut-off gray hoodie that Belichick is famous for. You know the one.

The Gray hoodie’s win percentage is an impressive 76.2 percent, while the Hot Jacket stands at 71.4. But if the Patriots start 8-0 under the Hot Jacket, it will take over both wins and win percentage. Is it time to rename the Belichick HOODIE database!?

 

10 Posits on Do Your Job II

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I don’t know about you guys but I pretty much live for specials like NFL Films’ Do Your Job II which premiered last night on NBC. It was one of the rare glimpses behind the Patriots curtain, with rare insight into what went on behind the scenes of last year’s playoff run.

DYJ2 now joins Do Your Job 1 and Bill Belichick’s A Football Life as some of the only true peeks as to what goes on behind the scenes in Foxboro. This is the kind of stuff that I think about constantly when I’m writing this blog — football strategy… what sets the Patriots apart from the rest of the league that has been trying, and failing, to catch them for the past decade-and-a-half-plus.

Well there was plenty of that, and this special was once again filled with sights and sounds to delight all Patriots fans who wonder what makes the Patriots so good.

The fact that we’re now just a few days away from the Patriots season kickoff (and I think I just got a ticket to the game) has me ready to EXPLODE with football fandom. Let’s take a look at 10 things that stuck out to me from DYJ2.

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Review: Belichick and Brady by Michael Holley

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I had the chance to review a copy of the championship edition of Michael Holley’s Belichick and Brady book and really enjoyed it. It was fun to re-live the past decade-and-a-half of Patriots football but solely through the lens of the two biggest characters at the center of it.

It’s really been such a remarkable ride and one that shifted drastically from when the Patriots were the darlings of the football world to when they became polarizing figures at the center of controversies both real and manufactured. Now you either love Belichick and Brady or hate them and the book does a good job of breaking down why.

I thought both Spygate and Deflategate were evenly handled. I know that will win points with many readers, others not so much, but Holley does an excellent job during the Deflategate episode of really breaking down how terribly the NFL handled the situation, how biased it was from the get go and all the many conflicts of interest just continued to pile up as the saga wore on.

Most of all it’s fun to get some small glimpses behind the curtain. There wasn’t an overwhelming amount of information that I hadn’t already heard or read about, but there was just enough to keep it feeling fresh. Holley is an excellent writer and really did justice to the drama of every season without getting too bogged down in the unnecessary details.

It’s definitely worth checking out if you like these kind of historical perspectives, but it’s exciting to know that significant chapters of it are still unwritten.

Pick up a copy of Belichick and Brady here.

Belichick Hoping for Ground Balance

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For whatever reason Bill Belichick always seems to open up a bit more than usual when talking with Pat Kirwan on Sirius XM Radio and Monday’s show was no exception. Kirwan, who poked his head into then Ninkovich retirement presser, has one of then best books learning how to watch football — Take Your Eye Off The Ball.

This quote stood out to me, as Belichick mentioned they were looking for more balance out of their backfield.

“Hopefully we will be a little bit less of a Blount on first down [and] second-and-short, Lewis on second down, White on third down — that type of [set-up],” Belichick said on SiriusXM NFL Radio.

“Part of that for us was getting our best player to do what he does best type of thing. Hopefully, this year, we’ll have a little more balance between the running game and passing game. Again, LG was primarily a runner. He didn’t have a lot of receiving production. The reverse is true of James White. So hopefully with our backs this year we’ll have a little more balance and be a little less predictable from that spot.”

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