Patriots Football Weekly Blog

From the Hart: Belichick backs Parcells’ HOF bid

INDIANAPOLIS — A couple former Patriots are up for debate and Pro Football Writers Association vote on Saturday for this year’s class of the Pro Football Hall of Fame. Both former New England head coach Bill Parcells and running back Curtis Martin are finalists for the highest honor the football world has to offer.

Bill Belichick — who worked under Parcells throughout the 1980s with the Giants and then again as an assistant head coach with the Patriots in 1996 before moving with the Tuna to the Jets – had high praise for his former boss and clearly backed his potential induction in Canton.

“A couple people have asked me about that. I guess they were on the committee. Absolutely, Bill has done a tremendous job in his time in the National Football League, really taking five organizations from not a very high point to a very high point,” Belichick said on Friday. “I was with him in three of those organizations and saw from a different perspective what he did in Dallas and Miami and those areas. Bill is a tremendous coach, a great influence in my career and on me personally.

“I think he’s had tremendous accomplishments in the game, not only his record but also his development of players and coaches and just the impact to the National Football League. In my time as a coach in the National Football League, not getting back to coaches that I just barely overlapped with, or didn’t overlap with at all, I would say of the coaches that I’ve been with over this time, either with or competing against, I would certainly put him right up there at the top. I learned an awful lot from him and think he’s done a tremendous job and had a tremendous career. I can’t imagine him being left out of the group.”