Jets savor earning the last laugh in Bill Belichick's likely final game with Patriots

FOXBOROUGH, Mass.

Tony Adams was chatting with his buddies back home in Illinois early last week when a rather preposterous idea came to them.

“I told them it would be crazy if I can get a pick in Bill Belichick’s last game as a Patriot,” the second-year safety said. “I was just joking to my homeboys, like, I would go down in history.”

It no longer seemed quite so absurd when Adams sat in the visiting locker room at Gillette Stadium on Sunday afternoon recalling that discussion. His interception with 2:03 remaining helped the Jets seal their 17-3 victory over New England, snapping a 15-game losing streak at the hands of their division foe and perhaps punctuating the final chapter in the long, icy, one-sided rivalry between the greatest head coach in NFL history and his favorite punching bags.

Adams and several others in that locker room — a setting where many had been plenty of times without knowing that the smiles of victory could exist within the walls — admitted once the game and the season were over that they were very much aware that this probably was going to be their last chance to get a win against Belichick with the Patriots.

“I’d be lying if I said we didn’t talk about that,” cornerback Sauce Gardner said. “He’s ruined the three times I had to play against him [before Sunday], even longer for the coaching staff, and for Woody and ownership even longer. I know they’re somewhere smiling.”

Though nothing is certain, most around the league expect the Patriots to have a new head coach by the time the 2024 season rolls around. Whether that comes after Belichick resigns, parts ways, semi-retires or maybe gets traded to another organization is unclear.

Belichick maintains that he will have his usual postseason conversations with ownership to sort all of that out in the coming days.

“That’s really all there is to say about that right now because that’s all there is to talk about,” he grumbled in a raspier voice than usual, thanks to an illness, when asked about his uncertain future.

If this is the end of Belichick’s reign, it came with a bit of a whimper in a partly filled building with a wildly ineffective offense amid miserable conditions.

During the first half, Belichick stood on the sideline with snow piling up on him, and in his hood, as if he already were the statue to himself that someday will stand outside the stadium. By the second half, he had a ski mask pulled over most of his face so that only his eyes peeked out from below the hood of his parka.

That it also came at the hands of the Jets gives it a certain symmetry. This era began with an awkward departure from the Jets, for whom he was the head coach for all of a day, with an exchange of draft picks changing hands for his services in 2000. That was followed by nearly a quarter-century of gleefully tormenting his former team while winning a record six Super Bowls along the way.

Belichick, the great Frowner of Foxborough, never showed it publicly, but he must have had plenty of chuckles at the Jets’ expense in the past 23 years.

On Sunday the Jets laughed. Perhaps last.

“If it’s official,” Jets linebacker C.J. Mosley said of Belichick’s departure, “all I can say is I respect him a lot and I appreciate the opportunity our team had to play against what could be the last team he coached with the Patriots. I’m happy we got the win and that he can’t celebrate it against the Jets.”

As the final seconds of the game wound down, Belichick silently removed the headset from over his ears, walked onto the snow-covered field, had a brief exchange with Jets coach Robert Saleh, then sought out just one other person: Aaron Rodgers. The two future Hall of Famers shared a moment together. Rodgers more than anyone must have understood what Belichick was feeling at that moment; it was a year ago that he himself walked off the turf at Lambeau Field with a cloud of uncertainty tinged with the inevitability of an end hanging over him.

Then Belichick simply walked back, head bowed, toward the staircase behind the Patriots' bench that leads to the team’s locker room, security personnel clearing a path through photographers. He descended the stairs and was gone.

While the Jets probably put Belichick (and, Adams would say, themselves) in the history books, they certainly put him in the record book with this win. Sunday’s result left his overall record, including the playoffs, at 333-178. He is tied with Tom Landry for the most losses among head coaches in NFL history. He also saw his regular-season record drop to 302-165, tying him with Dan Reeves and Jeff Fisher for most losses in those games.

The Jets  probably were less aware of those numbers than the fact that they most likely won’t have to deal with Belichick any longer, at least not in their division.

“The fact it might be Bill’s final game just makes it a little bit better,” tight end Tyler Conklin said of the result.

As for that football Adams intercepted off Bailey Zappe to slay the demon, the safety said he brought it to the sideline and gave it to the Jets’ equipment staff. They’ll paint it up for him and print the details and significance on it. It was his third pick of the season and of his career, but this one — like Adams himself — is now part of football lore, a tiny footnote in the bio of the best ever.

“That’s gonna stay with me forever,” he said of the unlikely souvenir.

There was one even more ridiculous part of Adams’ conversation with his pals.

“My homeboy told me to see if he’ll sign it,” he said.

Imagine that? Bill Belichick’s autograph on the football that decided his final game in Foxborough? Adams contemplated that for a moment, perhaps wondering how he would go about making such a request, before recognizing what he was even considering.

“Yeah,” he said, shrugging. “I know. Good luck with that.”

By Tom Rock

tom.rock@newsday.com@TomRock_Newsday

Tom Rock began covering sports for Newsday in 1996 and became its NFL columnist in 2022. He previously was Newsday's Giants beat writer beginning in 2008.