Bill Belichick suggests Super Bowl trophy be named after Tom Brady, not Vince Lombardi

Posted by author January 29, 2025 NFL

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The Super Bowl is less than two weeks away, meaning either the Kansas City Chiefs or the Philadelphia Eagles will have a chance to hold the Lombardi Trophy soon.

The trophy is named after Vince Lombardi, who coached the Green Bay Packers to win the first two Super Bowls. However, Bill Belichick, another coach with an impressive resume of Super Bowl trophies, believes the trophy should be named after someone else: His former quarterback and seven-time champion Tom Brady.

Six of Brady’s seven Super Bowl victories came as the head coach of the New England Patriots under Belichick. Brady, who retired in 2023, will call the Super Bowl on FOX. Belichick, now the head coach at North Carolina, suggested the trophy needs to be named after a player, not a coach.

“Players win games. You can’t win games without good players. I don’t care who the coach is, it’s impossible. You can’t win without good players,” Belichick said on the “Let’s Go!” podcast this week in a conversation with co-host Jim Gray.

“I don’t care who the coach is, it’s impossible. You can’t win without good players. You know, I found that out when I had [Lawrence] Taylor and [Carl] Banks and Harry Carson, Pepper Johnson, Jim Burt, Everson Walls, all those guys at the Giants. And same thing when we got good at Cleveland and then at New England. I mean, it’s [Tom] Brady, it’s [Willie] McGinest, it’s [Mike] Vrabel, it’s [Tedy] Bruschi, it’s Corey Dillon, it’s Randy Moss, Troy Brown, Lawyer Milloy, Ty Law, Rodney Harrison.

“Those are guys that won the games, man. I didn’t make any tackles. I didn’t make any kicks. That was [Adam] Vinatieri that made that kick in four inches of snow.

“You gotta have good players and as a coach, you want to give your players a chance to win. You wanna put ’em in a position where if they go out there and play well, they’ll have a chance to win. That’s what coach [Bill] Parcells taught me, is there’s always a way to win. You just gotta figure out what it is, and you have to give the players a chance.”

Gray countered Belichick, saying, “They don’t name it the Starr Trophy,” after the Packers’ Super Bowl-winning quarterback, Bart Starr. Belichick responded by suggesting that it be named after Brady.

“Maybe they should name it the Brady Trophy. He won seven of them,” Belichick said.

Brady appeared in 10 total Super Bowls, winning seven of them, including six with the Patriots and one with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, in which he defeated Kansas City quarterback Patrick Mahomes. Brady’s other six Super Bowls include wins over Kurt Warner, Jake Delhomme, Donovan McNabb, Russell Wilson, Matt Ryan and Jared Goff. Brady won the Super Bowl MVP honors five times, the most in NFL history.

Brady played college football at Michigan from 1995 to 1999 before being drafted in the sixth round of the 2000 NFL draft.

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