For the first time in years, Bill Belichick will be at home watching the NFL during the divisional round. He might be hate-watching the San Francisco 49ers.
Misery loves company, but when you’re as miserable as Bill Belichick after a loss, no, thank you. Yes, for the first time since the 2010 NFL season, the New England Patriots will not be playing in an AFC Championship. Heck, they won’t even be playing during the divisional round this weekend. He’ll be at home watching the games from the couch like the rest of us. We feel so bad for him…
Truthfully, there might be a good chance Belichick doesn’t watch a second of postseason football from here on out, still bitter that the greatest Patriots defense he ever had didn’t even make it to the NFL’s elite eight. But if there is one game he’ll force himself to tune into this week, it would have to be the San Francisco 49ers’ home game vs. the Minnesota Vikings. He’ll be hate-watching.
The 49ers are back in the NFL playoffs for the first time in six years. It had been a miserable half-decade in the Bay Area for 49ers owner Jed York. Yet, with the right head coach, the right general manager and the right quarterback, his franchise is two games away from getting back to the Super Bowl.
Belichick may have a ton of respect for Kyle Shanahan as a coach, John Lynch in the front office and Jimmy Garoppolo as a quarterback, but he’s not going to feel any of that on Sunday, only pure misery of “Why can’t my team play like that?” and “Why did Bob Kraft force me to trade away my golden ticket in favor of keeping an aging Tom Brady?”
It was Belichick who saw the undeniable talent within Garoppolo, as the Patriots made the former Eastern Illinois Panther a second-round pick in the 2014 NFL Draft. When Brady was suspended for the first four games of the 2016 NFL season for his role in DeflateGate, it was Belichick’s opportunity to see if he was right about Garoppolo’s promise as a future face of a franchise.
While Garoppolo defeated the Arizona Cardinals in primetime in Week 1, an injury in Week 2 vs. the Miami Dolphins brought a swift end to that theoretical four-game sample size. Instead, he got to work with another promising signal-caller in the form of Jacoby Brissett. He has since gone on to have some level of success quarterbacking the Indianapolis Colts the last three years.
But Garoppolo is the one that got away. After Shanahan left the Atlanta Falcons to become the 49ers’ head coach, San Francisco would trade for Garoppolo halfway through 2017. Garoppolo shined for a doormat of a 49ers team, bringing them to respectability at regular season’s end. The 49ers were poised to do big things in 2018 due in large part to their quarterback.
However, a torn ACL in September saw the 49ers stumble back into being terrible in 2018. They ended up winning only a handful of games and finished with the second-worst record in the league. But we just had a feeling that San Francisco was ready to right some wrongs from 2018 in 2019. Boy, did they ever, going from absolute dreck to the No. 1 seed in the NFC.
Flash forward to today and San Francisco looks to be the frontrunner to get to Super Bowl LIV out of the NFC. The defense is great and the offense is playing sound, complementary football, something Belichick wishes he could be getting out of his Patriots. The 49ers can run the ball down anyone’s throat, while New England needed bubble-screens to even give them a chance.
For the 49ers to reach the NFC Championship, Garoppolo will need to make a few big plays in the passing game. With arguably the best tight end in football in George Kittle to throw the football to, Garoppolo is certainly set up for success in the biggest game of his life up to this point. All this will do is remind Belichick that Brady is getting old and that he no longer has Rob Gronkowski.
Ultimately, Belichick has to be envious of what’s going on in San Francisco. The offense, defense and special teams are all great but have plenty of room to grow. Though the 49ers won’t be a dynasty like the Patriots have been, because nobody will ever be that again, this is a team Belichick would surely love to coach to a Super Bowl. The jealousy will turn into full-blown hate-watching.