By beating the Cleveland Browns on Sunday afternoon, the New England Patriots (8-0) are halfway to making history. Bill Belichick is already there.
New England's 27-13 victory over Cleveland marked Belichick's 300th career win as a head coach, including postseason play.
"It's a great privilege to coach this team and to coach the guys that I've coached throughout my career. Fortunately I didn't play in those games. That's a good thing for us," Belichick told reporters after the win. "But I've had a lot of good players, a lot of great players, and they're the ones who win the games."
Already in rarefied air, Belichick became just the third coach in NFL history to win at least 300 games, joining Hall of Fame skippers Don Shula (347) and George Halas (324). Soon enough, the Hoodie will be joining his victorious compatriots in Canton.
In a fun twist of fate, Belichick's monumental victory came against his former team in the Browns, with whom the now-67-year-old coach started his head-coaching career in 1991 as a 39-year-old former defensive coordinator. Another fun-ish fact: Belichick's first victory with the Browns came against ... the Patriots (Week 2, 1991).
Asked if he felt any emotion about the serendipitous achievement, Belichick resorted back to his time-old phraseology.
"It's always good to win," Belichick responded. "It's good to beat Cleveland. It's good to beat anybody. It's a tough league to win in. I'm proud of what the guys did, proud of what the team accomplished today. but we've got bigger goals ahead.
"The Ravens are going to be tough next week. They don't care about this game, or what I did, or what anybody else did. We're going to have to turn the page quickly and move on to Baltimore."
