OPINION:
Six-time Super Bowl champion coach Bill Belichick became a Hall of Fame victim last week as he failed to get the necessary votes to get into Canton his first time on the ballot, becoming a sympathetic figure — perhaps the evil genius’ greatest achievement.
But the legendary New England Patriots coach is already in the Pro Football Hall of Fame, his genius celebrated.
The defensive game plan that Belichick drew up for the 1990 New York Giants in their 20-19 Super Bowl win over the fast-paced Buffalo Bills offense is on display at the Hall. It was that dramatic, that historic.
This was the Super Bowl in Tampa, a few months after the Gulf War had started, and the game that was defined as much by the pre-game patriotic pageantry — Whitney Houston’s memorable Star-Spangled Banner and the flyover of four F-16 fighter jets. And its place in history is also marked by the missed 47-yard field goal by Buffalo kicker Scott Norwood – wide right – as time expired with New York winning its second Super Bowl championship by one point.
In between, there was the stunning gamble by Belichick to stop the Bills vaunted “K-Gun” offense led by four future Hall of Famers — quarterback Jim Kelly, receivers Andre Reed and James Lofton and running back Thurman Thomas, while the Giants entered the game with their backup quarterback Jeff Hostetler. Hostetler had taken over for an injured Phil Simms, who went down with a broken right foot in their mid-December loss to the Bills.
Buffalo’s no-huddle game plan led to a 13-3 record while leading the league in points scored, with 428 and 48 offensive touchdowns. The Bills scored 44 points in their divisional round win over Miami and followed that up with a 51-3 victory over the Oakland Raiders in the AFC title game. Buffalo went into the Super Bowl a seven-point favorite.
The Giants had the league’s top-ranked defense, but there were legitimate doubts that any defense could stop the Bills offense — at least any defense seen before. So Belichick came up with one they hadn’t seen.
Belichick used only two defensive linemen — nose tackle Erik Howard and defensive end Leonard Marshall — instead of three. He would use three to five linebackers and four to six defensive backs, depending on the situation.
And he would let running back Thurman Thomas have a field day.
“We thought Bill was crazy, because [the] first thing he said was we want Thurman Thomas to get 100 yards,” Carl Banks told ESPN. “We just weren’t allowing running backs to get 100 yards.”
Thomas did just that, rushing for 135 yards on 15 carries. But it was a trap laid by Belichick to keep the Bills from relying on their explosive pass game to quickly score.
“I didn’t feel like we wanted to get into a game where they threw the ball 45 times,” Belichick said in the Giants’ 25th anniversary series production. “I knew if they had some success running the ball, they would stay with it. And I always felt when we needed to stop the run, we could stop it. The more times they ran it, it was just one less time they could get it to Reed or get it to Lofton or throw it to Thomas, who I thought was more dangerous as a receiver, because there’s more space than there was when he was a runner.”
The offense did its part. Running back Ottis Anderson, named the game’s MVP, carried the ball 21 times for 102 yards, while Dave Meggett complemented him with nine carries for 48 yards.
Hostetler was able to distribute the ball to seven different receivers and 20 catches for 222 yards passing, while Kelly was limited to 18 completions for just 212 yards. He had thrown for 300 yards against the Raiders.
And when the Bills receivers ran crossing routes, as they often would do, they paid a price.
“As soon as Andre Reed got the ball, he needed a helmet in his ribs,” Banks said. “He has to know he’s not coming across the middle like he did against Oakland.”
Most importantly, the Giants offense held onto the ball for 40:33, leaving the Bills with just 19:27 time of possession in that explosive offense’s hands.
The Bills returned to the Super Bowl for the next three years, losing all three. The Belichick game plan shaped the Bills’ painful championship history that continues today.
This game would be a turning point for Belichick, who left the Giants following the season to take a head coaching job in Cleveland, where he coached from 1991 until the Browns moved to Baltimore following the 1995 season. He would join his boss from the Giants, head coach Bill Parcells, in 1996 in New England and then as Parcells’ defensive coordinator with the New York Jets from 1997 to 1999. Belichick took the head coaching job with the Patriots in 2000 and would go on to win six Super Bowl championships with the franchise. Those are the credentials that should have made the coach a lock for a Canton election.
The celebrated Belichick game plan, drawn out on paper and bound in a three-ring binder, is on display at the Pro Football Hall of Fame. It’s not a bust of Belichick in the Hall of Fame Gallery, but it may be the greatest testament to his coaching brilliance.
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