Bill Belichick, Patriots part ways after 24-year historic run

BOSTON — The Bill Belichick era is over.

The Patriots and coach Bill Belichick have decided to part ways after 24 years, a source said Thursday. Under Belichick, the Patriots emerged as the class of the NFL and found unprecedented success headlined by six Super Bowl titles and nine Super Bowl appearances. Belichick’s 24-year tenure stands as the greatest head-coaching run in league history, including 17 division titles and 13 conference championship game appearances on top of the Super Bowl titles.

Belichick departs at the low point of his tenure, a 4-13 campaign that doubled as the worst season of Kraft’s ownership. On Monday, Belichick reiterated a desire to coach in New England next season. His contract reportedly ran through the 2024 season after a renegotiation with ownership last year.

Belichick, 71, is expected to continue coaching in pursuit of Don Shula’s NFL record for most all-time wins as a head coach (347). Belichick is 15 wins away from breaking the record. Over the past four years, he went 29-38, though his reputation as the greatest coach in NFL history remains firmly intact.

Belichick and Kraft will address the media on Thursday at noon at Gillette Stadium.

In 2000, the Patriots acquired Belichick in a trade with the Jets that sent a first-round pick to New York and involved a few other pick swaps. Belichick assumed full control over football operations and selected Tom Brady in the sixth round of his first draft. Belichick went 5-11 over his first season, then won a Super Bowl the next year in Brady’s first season as the starting quarterback.

That victory, a defensive masterpiece painted as 14-point underdogs versus the Rams, launched the Patriots dynasty and Belichick’s and Brady’s arcs as the greatest of all time at their respective positions. The Patriots followed with Super Bowl wins in 2003 and 2004, then an undefeated regular season in 2007 that ended with an upset loss to the Giants in Super Bowl XLII as 12-point favorites.

After another Super Bowl loss to the Giants in the 2011 season, Belichick restarted the dynasty by edging the Seahawks in Super Bowl XLIX, an all-time classic defined by his late-game management and Malcolm Butler’s goal-line interception. Two years later, the Patriots clinched a fifth title on the back of the greatest comeback in Super Bowl history versus Atlanta, then dropped an all-time Super Bowl shootout to the Eagles, and added another ring in 2018, when they again toppled the Rams, 13-3.

Belichick and Kraft allowed Brady to leave in March 2020, which complicated their individual legacies months later when Brady won a Super Bowl in his first of three seasons with Tampa Bay. Meanwhile, the Patriots posted a losing record in three of their next four seasons running through quarterbacks Cam Newton, Mac Jones and Bailey Zappe.

Belichick’s legacy in New England is all-encompassing, including years of brilliant game plans, one of the largest coaching trees in league history, disciplined roster-building practices and cap management, the NFL’s longest winning streak and multiple controversies. Under Belichick, the Patriots forfeited first-round picks in 2008 and 2016; first, for illegally taping opponents’ signals and later allegedly scheming to deflate footballs before games in a disputed scandal that resulted in a four-game suspension for Brady in 2016.

Over his final seasons, the Patriots were undermined by Belichick’s work in free agency and the draft as their chief personnel decision-makers. He also struggled to adequately involve and replace key members of his front office and coaching staff.

In 2021, Kraft pushed for a more collaborative evaluation process in the front office to end years of poor drafting. Last year, Kraft initiated coaching changes that followed a losing 2022 campaign undone by Belichick employing longtime defensive assistant Matt Patricia as his lead offensive coach and ex-Patriots special teams coordinator Joe Judge as his quarterbacks coach.

While Patriots offensive coordinator/quarterbacks coach Bill O’Brien replaced Patricia and Judge last season, the offense fell even further, averaging 13.9 points per game, second-fewest in the league. Inside the building, Belichick’s staff and front office suffered from more dysfunction, as documented in a recent Herald report.

Belichick took responsibility for the team’s 4-13 record Monday saying: “It was obviously a very disappointing season all the way around. Players, coaches, staff, organization, everybody is not anywhere close to what our standard and expectations are. So, obviously, things need to be fixed. Proud of the way the players and the team competed, but not the results, obviously, from any of us – starting with me and all the way down to everybody else that was involved in it.”

Patriots linebackers coach Jerod Mayo and ex-Titans coach Mike Vrabel are widely assumed to have an inside track at replacing Belichick. Mayo, who just finished his fifth season in coaching, received a contract extension last January that led to more money and responsibilities. Mayo, 37, has interviewed for multiple head-coaching jobs in recent years.

Vrabel was fired Tuesday after six seasons in Tennessee, where he led four winning seasons and reached the 2019 AFC Championship Game. As a player, Vrabel won three Super Bowls in New England, where he was inducted into the Patriots Hall of Fame during an October ceremony. Vrabel, 48, addressed fans at halftime of a home game the following day, when he called the Patriots organization “a special place.”

ESPN and the NFL Network first reported the decision to part ways.