Sarcastic Bill Belichick On Pats' Lack Of Proposals: 'We Love The Rules'
BOSTON (CBS) -- Bill Belichick has been deeply involved in football for his entire life. He's been an NFL coach since 1975. He's won more Super Bowls -- five -- than any other head coach in NFL history, and he's got two more as a defensive coordinator under his belt. He's regarded as perhaps the very best coach in the history of the sport, and is universally regarded at worst as one of the best three or four coaches to ever roam a sideline.
The man knows a thing or two about the sport of football.
And yet, time and time again, Belichick found that whenever he proposed a rule change to the NFL, the competition committee had a way of ignoring his suggestion. In some cases, those proposals were later adopted ... but with enough time having passed for anyone to connect the rule changes to Belichick.
So, this year and last year, perhaps fed up with the process of being disregarded, Belichick and the Patriots offered no rule changes to the committee.
On Thursday, when asked why he and the team made no suggestions, Belichick poured the exact proper amount of salt on his answer.
"We love the rules the way they are," Belichick curtly replied. "Yeah. We don't want to change them."
Peak Belichick.
This year, among the most significant rule changes are the ban on leaping the line in attempt to block kicks as well as the shortening of overtime periods from 15 minutes to 10 minutes. As a coach who employed the tactic of leaping the line in recent years (Jamie Collins and Shea McClellin have done it for New England), Belichick was asked for his thoughts on that change.
His answer?
"That's another monster," he quipped.
How will his team adjust?
"Won't do it," he said.
And the change to overtime?
"I don't think it's a big deal," Belichick said. "I mean, it's shorter, so it is what it is."
So there you have it. Everything in the league is hunky-dory in Belichick's eyes as he enters his 43rd year in the NFL.
For some background, even an owner of another NFL team believes the league has shown a reluctance to accepting proposals from the Patriots. While Belichick's proposal of moving the PAT back 15 yards was accepted, he's long been ignored in his quest to make every play reviewable and to place fixed cameras on all boundaries.
One of the arguments against the fixed cameras in all stadiums involved the cost of installing the actual cameras.
Bill didn't really buy that explanation from the multi-billion-dollar NFL.
"Maybe we could have a bake sale, raise some money for the cameras. We could do a car wash," he said in 2014. "We just spent however many million dollars on the replay system. I mean, there's a thousand cameras in every stadium, so if somebody spills a beer on somebody we have it on record, right?"
