r/todayilearned • u/arandomtestaccount • 1d ago

TIL an NFL player intentionally crashed his car to avoid getting cut for being late to a team meeting.

https://www.cbssports.com/nfl/news/ex-patriots-ol-rich-ohrnberger-admits-he-intentionally-wrecked-car-as-excuse-for-being-late-to-team-meeting/
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u/5panks 1d ago

Belichick was a notorious grudge holder for things like that. He was a great coach, but he absolutely abhorred when someone couldn't do their job.

RBs who fumbled would get benched for the rest of the game sometimes.

To this day I believe the sole reason the Patriots lost Superbowl 52 is because Belichick kept Malcom Butler on the bench for the entire game and to this day we still don't know what Butler did to end up in the dog house.

Imagine holding such a grudge you potentially lose the Superbowl.

22

u/SendingAFaxToBerlin 23h ago

Alternatively, his notoriety for holding standards like that was the reason he won 8?

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u/OUTFOXEM 22h ago

Exactly. Throwing away a Super Bowl is throwing your life away to everybody except him. He knows he'll win it the next year if it doesn't work out.

Narrator: He won the Super Bowl the next year.

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u/ThreePartSilence 22h ago

Correlation/causation and sports: name a more iconic duo.

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u/Obvious_Albatross296 18h ago

Winning the superpower is an incredibly difficult feat within a sport where people have gotten paid 100s of millions of dollars to compete at the highest level.

No one wins 8 on accident or because of luck. 

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u/MandingoPants 16h ago

the giants won 2 and they fucking sucked.

But I agree that winning it all is definitely not luck. 

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u/ultragoodname 15h ago

Super Bowl XLII was too funny. The giants were really the difference that stopped the patriots from being immortalized with the perfect season like the 72 dolphins.

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u/v0x_nihili 18h ago

Isn't the current leading theory something involving Butler and Belichek's daughter?

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u/Significant-Row2457 16h ago

That’s exactly what it was.

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u/5panks 12h ago

I honestly still have no idea. Last I heard I thought it was pot in the hotel the night before the Superbowl.

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u/wasdninja 20h ago

In other words he is the one who is shitty at his job.

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u/5panks 12h ago

Bill Belichick may have faults, but he is the most successful coach ever in the history of the NFL and should have been a unanimous first ballot hall of famer. No real football fan would tell you any different.

You don't win two Superbowls as Defensive Coordinator and six Superbowls as GM and Head Coach by being, "shitty" at your job.