What if.
What if Belichick had answered his phone on Valentine's Day 1996, and it was Modell calling not to fire him as Cleveland Browns head coach, but to invite him to join the franchise in its new home in Baltimore?
What if Modell had stood by his vow of Nov. 8, 1995, when he said, "Bill Belichick will be my head coach in 1996''?
What if Belichick's team hadn't lost six of its last seven games after that vow, or hadn't finished the season 5-11 after being picked by some experts to reach the Super Bowl? So much of who and what Belichick is today as head coach of the fabulously successful New England Patriots can be traced to who and what he was as head coach of the mostly unsuccessful Browns. There are such stark differences between the two tenures, and yet Belichick remains essentially the same person, just not entirely the same coach."The Browns were his training camp, his boot camp for success,'' said Mary Kay Cabot, the beat reporter who covered Belichick and the Browns for the Cleveland Plain Dealer.
"There were mistakes he made here on players, personnel, staff, public relations. But he's the master of adjustments. He learned how to do it right by everything he did wrong here.''Nearly 12 years ago, when Modell took only a few minutes to fire Belichick over the phone, the decision was hailed as necessary and inevitable. An Akron columnist pithily wrote, "Bill Belichick's five-year reign of error is over.''