Bill Belichick has been adamant throughout the years that players win championships.
With that in mind, Belichick suggested that the Lombardi Trophy be renamed after Tom Brady. After all, the decorated quarterback won an NFL-record seven Super Bowl titles in his career — six with Belichick as his head coach with the New England Patriots and another with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers.
Belichick has since moved on from the Patriots and became the head coach at North Carolina. He made his comments during his weekly appearance on SiriusXM’s “Let’s Go” podcast.
“Players win games. You can’t win games without good players,” Belichick said in a conversation with co-host Jim Gray. “I don’t care who the coach is, it’s impossible. You can’t win without good players. You know, I found that out when I had (Lawrence) Taylor and (Carl) Banks and Harry Carson, Pepper Johnson, Jim Burt, Everson Walls, all those guys at the Giants. And same thing when we got good at Cleveland and then at New England. I mean, it’s (Tom) Brady, it’s (Willie) McGinest, it’s (Mike) Vrabel, it’s (Tedy) Bruschi, it’s Corey Dillon, it’s Randy Moss, Troy Brown, Lawyer Milloy, Ty Law, Rodney Harrison. Those are guys that won the games, man. I didn’t make any tackles. I didn’t make any kicks. That was (Adam) Vinatieri that made that kick in four inches of snow.
“You gotta have good players and as a coach, you want to give your players a chance to win. You wanna put ’em in a position where if they go out there and play well, they’ll have a chance to win. That’s what coach (Bill) Parcells taught me, is there’s always a way to win. You just gotta figure out what it is, and you have to give the players a chance.”
Gray noted that “They don’t name it the Starr Trophy,” referring to Bart Starr, the quarterback who guided the Green Bay Packers to those first two Super Bowl wins. “It’s named the Lombardi Trophy.”
Belichick quipped, “Maybe they should name it the Brady Trophy. He won seven of them.”
A five-time Super Bowl MVP, Brady captured titles with the Patriots in 2001, 2003, 2004, 2014, 2016 and 2018 and another with the Buccaneers in 2020.
