Bill Belichick

Explore about the Famous Football Coach Bill Belichick, who was born in United States on April 16, 1952. Analyze Bill Belichick’s net worth, age, bio, birthday, dating, height-weight, wiki. Investigate who is Bill Belichick dating now? Look into this article to know how old is Bill Belichick?

Bill Belichick Biography

Legendary NFL coach who led the New England Patriots to victory in Super Bowls XXXVI, XXXVIII, XXXIX, XLIX, LI and LIII. He was named AP NFL Coach of the Year in 2003, 2007, and 2010.

He played tight end in college for the Wesleyan University football team.

Before taking the Patriots to the Super Bowl, he was fired by the Cleveland Browns after compiling a 5-11 record during his final season with the team.

He married Debby Clarke in 1977, and the couple had 3 children together before divorcing in 2006.

He and star quarterback Tom Brady combined to form a dominant duo for the Patriots.

Belichick was born on April 16, 1952, in Nashville, Tennessee, the son of Jeannette (Munn) and Steve Belichick (born Stephen Biličić). Bill was named after College Football Hall of Fame coach Bill Edwards, who was his godfather. Belichick is of Croatian ancestry, and his paternal grandparents, Ivan Biličić and Marija (Mary) Barković, emigrated from the Croatian village of Draganić, Karlovac, in 1897, settling in Monessen, Pennsylvania.

William Stephen Belichick (/ˈ b ɛ l ɪ tʃ ɪ k / or /ˈ b ɛ l ɪ tʃ ɛ k / ; born April 16, 1952) is an American professional football coach who serves as the head coach of the New England Patriots of the National Football League (NFL). He exercises extensive authority over the Patriots’ football operations, effectively making him the team’s general manager as well. He holds numerous coaching records, including winning a record six Super Bowls as the head coach of the Patriots, and two more as defensive coordinator for the New York Giants. He is widely considered to be one of the greatest coaches in NFL history by current and former players, his peers, and the press.

He was raised in Annapolis, Maryland, where his father was an assistant football coach at the United States Naval Academy. Belichick has cited his father as one of his most important football mentors, and Belichick often studied football with him. Bill reportedly learned to break down game films at a young age by watching his father and the Navy staff do their jobs. He graduated from Annapolis High School in 1970 with classmate Sally Brice-O’Hara. While there, he played football and lacrosse, with the latter being his favorite sport. He enrolled at Phillips Academy in Andover, Massachusetts, for a postgraduate year, with the intention of improving his grades and test scores to be admitted into a quality college. The school honored him 40 years later by inducting him into its Athletics Hall of Honor in 2011.

After graduating, Belichick took a $25-per-week job as an assistant to Baltimore Colts head coach Ted Marchibroda in 1975. In 1976, he joined the Detroit Lions as their assistant special teams coach before adding tight ends and wide receivers to his coaching duties in 1977. He spent the 1978 season with the Denver Broncos as their assistant special teams coach and defensive assistant.

Belichick subsequently attended Wesleyan University in Middletown, Connecticut, where he played center and tight end. In addition to being a member of the football team, he played lacrosse and squash, serving as the captain of the lacrosse team during his senior season. A member of Chi Psi fraternity, he earned a bachelor’s degree in economics in 1975. He would eventually be part of the inaugural induction class into the university’s Athletics Hall of Fame in spring 2008.

Belichick began his coaching career in 1975 and became the defensive coordinator for New York Giants head coach Bill Parcells by 1985. Parcells and Belichick won two Super Bowls together before Belichick left to become the head coach of the Cleveland Browns in 1991. He remained in Cleveland for five seasons but was fired following the team’s 1995 season. He then rejoined Parcells, first in New England, where the team lost Super Bowl XXXI, and later with the New York Jets.

In 1979, Belichick began a 12-year stint with the New York Giants alongside head coach Ray Perkins as a defensive assistant and special teams coach. He added linebackers coaching to his duties in 1980 and was named defensive coordinator in 1985 under head coach Bill Parcells, who had replaced Perkins in 1983. The Giants won Super Bowl XXI and Super Bowl XXV following the 1986 and 1990 seasons. His defensive game plan from the New York Giants’ 20–19 upset of the Buffalo Bills in Super Bowl XXV has been placed in the Pro Football Hall of Fame.

After his dismissal by the Cleveland Browns, Belichick served under Parcells again as assistant head coach and defensive backs coach with the Patriots for the 1996 season. The Patriots finished with an 11–5 record and won the AFC Championship over the Jacksonville Jaguars, but they lost to the Green Bay Packers in Super Bowl XXXI amid rumors of Parcells’s impending defection.

From 1991 until 1995, Belichick was the head coach of the Cleveland Browns. During his tenure in Cleveland, he compiled a 36–44 record, leading the team to the playoffs in 1994, his only winning year with the team. Coincidentally, his one playoff victory during his Browns tenure was achieved against the New England Patriots in the Wild Card Round during that postseason. In Belichick’s last season in Cleveland, the Browns finished 5–11, despite starting 3–1. One of his most controversial moves was cutting quarterback Bernie Kosar midway through the 1993 season. Kosar was signed by the Dallas Cowboys two days later and won a Super Bowl with the Cowboys in Super Bowl XXVIII. In November 1995, in the middle of the ongoing football season, Browns owner Art Modell had announced he would move his franchise to Baltimore after the season. After first being given assurances that he would coach the new team that would later become the Baltimore Ravens, Belichick was instead fired on February 14, 1996, one week after the shift was officially announced.

In February 1997, Belichick, who had been an assistant coach under Bill Parcells with the New York Giants and New England Patriots, was named the Jets interim head coach while the Jets and Patriots continued to negotiate compensation to release Parcells from his contract with the Patriots and allow Parcells to coach the Jets. Six days later, the Patriots and Jets reached an agreement that allowed Parcells to coach the Jets, and Belichick became the team’s assistant head coach and defensive coordinator.

Soon after this bizarre turn of events, he was introduced as the Patriots’ 12th full-time head coach, succeeding the recently fired Pete Carroll. The Patriots had tried to hire him away from Parcells/the Jets in the past. Parcells and the Jets claimed that Belichick was still under contract to the Jets, and demanded compensation from the Patriots. NFL Commissioner Paul Tagliabue agreed, and the Patriots gave the Jets a first-round draft pick in 2000 in exchange for the right to hire Belichick.

When Parcells stepped down as head coach after the 1999 season, he had already arranged with team management to have Belichick succeed him. However, Belichick would be the New York Jets’ head coach for only one day. On January 4, 2000, when Belichick was introduced as head coach to the media—the day after his hiring was publicized—he turned it into a surprise resignation announcement. Before taking the podium, he scrawled a resignation note on a napkin that read, in its entirety, “I resign as HC of the NYJ.” He then delivered a half-hour speech explaining his resignation to the assembled press corps.

After being named head coach of the Jets, Belichick resigned after only one day on the job to accept the head coaching job for the New England Patriots on January 27, 2000. Since then, he has led the Patriots to 17 AFC East division titles, 13 appearances in the AFC Championship Game, and nine Super Bowl appearances, with a record six wins. In total Belichick has won eight Super Bowl titles and finished as runner-up four times from his combined time as an assistant and head coach.

In 2001, the Patriots went 11–5 in the regular season, and defeated the Oakland Raiders (in the “Tuck Rule Game”) and Pittsburgh Steelers on the way to the Super Bowl. In Super Bowl XXXVI, Belichick’s defense held the St. Louis Rams’ offense, which had averaged 31 points during the season, to 17 points, and the Patriots won on a last second field goal by Adam Vinatieri. The win was the first Super Bowl championship in Patriots history.

The following season (2002)—the first in Gillette Stadium—the Patriots went 9–7 and missed the playoffs. New England finished with the same record as the New York Jets and the Miami Dolphins, but the Jets won the AFC East title as a result of the third tiebreaker (record among common opponents).

The Patriots’ 2003 season started with a 31–0 loss to the Buffalo Bills in Week 1, a few days after they released team defensive captain Lawyer Milloy. However, they dominated through the remainder of the season to finish 14–2, setting a new franchise record for wins in a season. In the final week of the regular season, the Patriots avenged their loss to the Bills by the same 31–0 score. They defeated the Tennessee Titans in the Divisional Round. Playing against the Indianapolis Colts and Co-MVP Peyton Manning in the AFC Championship (Steve McNair of the Titans was also Co-MVP), the Patriots recorded four interceptions, and advanced to Super Bowl XXXVIII, where they defeated the Carolina Panthers 32–29 on a late Adam Vinatieri field goal. Belichick also was awarded with the NFL Coach of the Year Award.

Belichick is the NFL’s longest-tenured active head coach, as well as the first all-time in playoff coaching wins with 31 and third in regular season coaching wins in the NFL with 261. He is one of only three head coaches who have won six NFL titles. He was named the AP NFL Coach of the Year for the 2003, 2007, and 2010 seasons. Belichick is the only active head coach named to the National Football League 100th Anniversary All-Time Team.

In 2004, the Patriots once again finished with a 14–2 record, and they defeated the Indianapolis Colts in the Divisional Round. They opened the season at 6–0, which combined with the 15 straight wins to end the previous season, gave New England 21 consecutive victories to break the record for most wins in a row formerly held by the Miami Dolphins with 18 straight victories in the 1972 and 1973 seasons. They defeated the Pittsburgh Steelers in the AFC Championship. In Super Bowl XXXIX, the Patriots beat the Philadelphia Eagles and became only the second team to win three Super Bowls in four years. Belichick is the only coach to accomplish the feat as the Dallas Cowboys had two head coaches in the stretch they won three of four from 1992–1995.

Belichick was married to Debby Clarke, but they divorced in the summer of 2006. They allegedly separated before the 2004 season, which was disclosed by the Patriots in July 2005. Belichick was also accused of maintaining a relationship with former Giants receptionist Sharon Shenocca, which helped precipitate her divorce.

He has three children with Debby Clarke Belichick: Amanda, Stephen, and Brian. Amanda is a 2007 graduate of Wesleyan University, where she, like her father, played lacrosse. After college, she worked at Connecticut preparatory school Choate Rosemary Hall as a lacrosse coach and in the admissions department. In 2009 she became an assistant coach for the University of Massachusetts Amherst women’s lacrosse team, before joining the Ohio State Buckeyes in the same position the next year. After serving as interim head women’s lacrosse coach at Wesleyan, she was named head women’s lacrosse coach at Holy Cross College in Massachusetts in July 2015. Stephen played lacrosse and football at Rutgers University on scholarship. Stephen was hired as an assistant coach with the New England Patriots in May 2012; as of 2016, he is the team’s safeties coach. Brian attended Trinity College where he played lacrosse. In 2016 Brian was hired to the Patriots’ front office as a scouting assistant.

Since 2007, Belichick has been in a relationship with Linda Holliday who also serves as Executive Director of Belichick’s namesake foundation.

In an incident dubbed “Spygate,” on September 9, 2007, NFL security caught a Patriots video assistant taping the New York Jets’ defensive signals from the sidelines, which is not an approved location. The NFL rules state “No video recording devices of any kind are permitted to be in use in the coaches’ booth, on the field, or in the locker room during the game.” Jets coach Eric Mangini, a former Patriots assistant, tipped off league officials that the Patriots might have been filming their signals. After the game, the Jets formally complained to the league.

In 2007, Belichick led the Patriots to the first perfect regular season since the introduction of the 16-game regular season schedule in 1978, only the fourth team to do so in National Football League history after the 1934 and 1942 Chicago Bears and 1972 Miami Dolphins. In the Divisional Round of the playoffs, they defeated the Jacksonville Jaguars by a score of 31–20. In the AFC Championship, the Patriots defeated the San Diego Chargers by a score of 21–12. The Patriots were upset in Super Bowl XLII by the New York Giants, his former team, due to the defense allowing a famous play to David Tyree near the end of regulation The Patriots’ failure to attain a “perfect season” (undefeated and untied, including playoffs) preserved the Miami Dolphins as the sole team to do so, having finished their 1972 regular season at 14–0 and having won three games in the playoffs. Only two other teams in professional football have recorded a perfect season—the 1948 Cleveland Browns (14–0) of the then All-America Football Conference and the 1948 Calgary Stampeders (12–0) of the Canadian Football League. No team in the former American Football League had a perfect season.

In the Patriots’ 2008 season-opener against the Kansas City Chiefs, quarterback Tom Brady suffered a season-ending injury in the first quarter. Backup quarterback Matt Cassel was named the starter for the remainder of the season. However, with a win in Week 2, the Patriots broke their own record for regular season wins in a row with 21 (2006–08). After losing over a dozen players to the injured reserve list, including Rodney Harrison, Adalius Thomas, and Laurence Maroney, the Patriots still managed their league-leading eighth consecutive season with a winning record, going 11–5. Nevertheless, the Patriots, who finished second in the AFC East, missed the playoffs for the first time since 2002, losing on tiebreakers to the Miami Dolphins (who won the division on the fourth tiebreaker, better conference record) and the Baltimore Ravens (who beat out the Patriots for the last playoff spot due to a better conference record). The 1985 Denver Broncos are the only other 11-win team to miss the playoffs in a 16-game season.

In 2009, with a fully healthy Tom Brady back as the starting quarterback, Belichick was able to guide the Patriots to yet another AFC East division title with a 10–6 record. However, the Patriots lost to the Baltimore Ravens in the Wild Card Round.

Soon after hiring Belichick, owner Robert Kraft gave him near-complete control over the team’s football operations, effectively making him the team’s general manager as well. Until 2009, Belichick split many of the duties normally held by a general manager on other clubs with player personnel director Scott Pioli, though Belichick had the final say on football matters. Pioli left for the Kansas City Chiefs after the 2008 season.

Soon after hiring Belichick, owner Robert Kraft gave him near-complete control over the team’s football operations, effectively making him the team’s general manager as well. Until 2009, Belichick split many of the duties normally held by a general manager on other clubs with player personnel director Scott Pioli, though Belichick had the final say on football matters. Pioli left for the Kansas City Chiefs after the 2008 season.

In the 2011 season, the Patriots topped the AFC with a 13–3 record. Following a victory over the Denver Broncos in the Divisional Round, the Patriots won the AFC Championship game beating the Baltimore Ravens 23–20 when the Ravens failed to score a touchdown and Baltimore’s kicker, Billy Cundiff, missed a routine 32-yard field goal attempt to tie the game and send it into overtime. This sent New England to their fifth Super Bowl under Belichick. In Super Bowl XLVI, the Patriots lost in the Super Bowl XLII rematch to the New York Giants by a score of 21–17.

The sanctions against Belichick were the harshest imposed on a head coach in league history until the New Orleans Saints’ Sean Payton was suspended for the entire 2012 season for covering up a scheme in which bounties were paid for deliberately knocking opponents out of games.

On September 26, 2012, following a 31–30 loss to the Baltimore Ravens, Belichick was fined $50,000 for grabbing a replacement official’s arm while asking for more specific clarity on a ruling after Baltimore had narrowly converted a last-second field goal attempt to secure the win. The Patriots finished the 2012 regular season with a 12–4 record. In the Divisional Round, they defeated the Houston Texans by a score of 41–28 and made it to the AFC Championship, where they lost to the Baltimore Ravens by a score of 28–13, ending their season.

What's Bill Belichick Net Worth 2024

Bill Belichick Family