It took only six weeks in the 2022 NFL season for Bill Belichick to found yet another way to go down in the history books. On Sunday, the longtime Patriots head coach tied George Halas on career victories.
New England’s 38-15 victory over the Cleveland Browns was the 324th win in Belichick’s head coaching career, making him the second winningest coach in NFL history along the Bears legend – only below Don Shula (347).
Needless to say, it’s an important feat for Belichick, who now is on the brink of surpassing Halas to further reduce the gap with the Miami Dolphins icon. Belichick is obviously proud of this feat, but thinks the players he coached deserve the credit.
Bill Belichick credits players, staff for tying George Halas on career wins
“George Halas, Paul Brown, I probably shouldn’t make that list,” Belichick said, via ProFootballTalk. “They were my idols. Coach Halas was again a friend of my dad’s. My dad knew people on the staff that coached for Coach Halas. He coached Bill Wade at Vanderbilt, so they had a lot of Chicago-Halas connections. When they came to Baltimore, we would go to the locker room after the game, stuff like that. They were always very gracious and generous. They let me hang around and stuff like that. A ton of respect for Coach Halas and the McCaskey family, and what he did for professional football and the way that he – and since we’re here, Paul Brown – and others like that paved the way for us as coaches and paved the way for the National Football League to grow into what it is today. They laid a lot of the building blocks.
“You can’t win games in this league without good players. I’m very fortunate to have coached a lot of great players and have had a lot of great coaches on my staff through the years. A lot of those guys have gone on to have tremendous careers and players obviously – many of them are Patriots Hall of Fame or NFL Hall of Fame, or are going to be. Winning games in this league is about having good players and I’m very fortunate to have a lot of them. I had them in New York. I had them in Cleveland. I have them here.”
