The Online Reflector

By Dan Friend
Managing Editor

One second is a long time. The Bill Belichick of Dec. 3, 1995, used just one tick on the clock to show his team how to take advantage of all 3,600 seconds in a regulation football game.Belichick coached the original Cleveland Browns franchise for four years, until the end of the 1995 season, when Art Modell announced on Nov. 6 that he would uproot the franchise to Baltimore. Cleveland, and the Browns, felt betrayed.

Less than a month later and nearing the end of a sound 31-10 beating from the San Diego Chargers, Belichick called a sideline pass to stop the clock and then scurried to issue his last time out with, of course, one second remaining.

Then Browns place-kicker Matt Stover’s kick doesn’t get through the uprights before the final buzzer, but the margin narrows from 21 to 18 points. Pre-hoodie Belichick proved his point: a regulation football game is 60 minutes, and he wanted his team to play to its bitter conclusion.

So why, with one more second until the finale of Super Bowl XLII, did Belichick prematurely scamper across the field with his figurative tail between his legs to avoid the undesirable championship loss?

According to a Feb. 5 press conference transcript, Belichick denied that he was aware any time remained on the clock.

In the conference transcript from the Web site www.allthingsbillbelichick.com, Belichick said, “Basically, on that last play I wasn’t really sure of the time…I wanted to congratulate Tom [Coughlin]…They deserved it. There really wasn’t much left at that point.”

It should be noted that at least Belichick did congratulate the Giants head coach Tom Coughlin and with a hug.

But this excuse seems implausible coming from the man who managed to catch an official’s goof from across the field and had a ruling overturned that the Giants did, indeed, have an extra player on the field who was hovering one stride from the sideline during Super Bowl XLII.

Coming from the coach who kept his star-studded lineup on the field until the final play against NFL bottom feeders such as the Buffalo Bills and Washington Redskins, throttling them 56-10 and 52-7 respectively, the hasty one-second scamper seemed very un-Belichick.

In the past I have come to the defense of Belichick’s old-school football tactics and lack of desire for the oft-abused media limelight. And despite my life-long affair with the Indianapolis Colts (to all the bandwagoners out there, I have pictures in my Eric Dickerson jersey), I had even prepared to give the Patriots a begrudging nod of approval if they completed the sacred 19-0 season.

But at the threshold of history, the “aw-shucks” diligence of Eli Manning and the New York Giants denied the would-be-juggernaut Patriots the title of best team ever, and Belichick could not have behaved more childishly.

As Patriots linebacker Junior Seau waited in the tunnel of the University of Phoenix Stadium impatiently tapping his cleats, officials were forced to remind Belichick that one final symbolic second remained, and it needed to be played to conclude the final play of the season’s final (meaningful) game. In anticlimactic fashion, time stagnated on the clock.

Call me a purist, but that second sullied the integrity of the game, and it convinced me of what I should have known all along: Belichick’s lack of personal composure overshadows his coaching brilliance.

The criticisms and frustration of the Spygate Scandal burned Belichick all season, and he channeled that fire directly into his players, who spent (almost) an entire season scorching opponents and looking for enemies, real or imagined.

And in the minutes that ticked down to that last defining moment of the Patriots imperfect 18-1 season, Belichick, consumed by contempt, forgot that important lesson he taught the Cleveland Browns 13 years before: the game must be finished, and it’s a full 60 minutes.