It’s official: the days of Bill Belichick the “defensive genius” are over.

Sure, Belichick is still one of the great coaches of all time. He still might be the best in the game today. He’s still the only coach to win three Super Bowls in four years. He still might win more Super Bowls in the future. He’ll still end up in the Hall of Fame.

He’s still a great football coach, in other words.

But defensive genius? That label started to peel off the bottle back in the spring of 2005. Now, after New England’s embarrassing 38-17 loss to the Saints Monday night, the label lies crumpled up wet on the floor beside the bar stool, waiting for the cleaning crew to sweep it away at the end of the night.

For the stat aficionados and football historians among us, New England’s defensive implosion Monday night was devastating, and there’s no way to gloss over one of the worst performances in modern football history.

ONE — My favorite particular stat is this: Drew Brees Monday night became the first player in 34 years to average more than 16.0 yards per pass attempt (min. 20 attempts). The last was Denver journeyman Charley Johnson in the 1975 season-opener against the Chiefs and Kansas City's immortal coach Paul Wiggin. 

Brees on Monday attempted 23 passes for 371 yards (16.1 YPA). For some perspective, Tom Brady, in his best game, averaged 14.2 YPA. That was in a 49-28 win over the Dolphins in his record-setting 2007 season.

Before Brees Monday night, only four other players had ever averaged 16.0 YPA passing in a game (since 1960), and three are in the Hall of Fame (Joe Namath, Johnny Unitas, Sonny Jurgensen).

Those guys played back in the 1960s, the long-ball era in the NFL, when teams tried to stretch defenses with high-risk bombs down the field. Averages per attempt and per completion were much higher back then, before the low-risk, high-percentage style of offense that has been in vogue since Bill Walsh and Joe Montana came together in San Francisco in 1979.  

Quarterbacks in the modern NFL simply aren’t meant to average 16 yards per attempt. But one of them finally did Monday night.

That first-in-34-years performance didn’t come against the winless Buccaneers of 1976, or against Rod Rust’s 1-15 Patriots of 1990 or against the sad-sack Lions who, for each of the past three years, have fielded the three worst pass defenses in the history of football.

Nope. Brees' once-in-a-lifetime performance came against defensive genius Bill Belichick and your New England Patriots.

TWO — The perfect game: Brees is just the second player to produce the proverbial “perfect” game (158.3 passer rating) against a Bill Belichick defense. Nobody did it against his Giants. Nobody did it against his Browns. Peyton Manning did it once against the Patriots, back in 2000. And now Brees did it Monday night against the Patriots.

But there’s another way to look at it: there have been just 22 “perfect” games in the NFL since 1960 (min. 20 attempts). Two of those 22 “perfect” games have come against Belichick’s defenses.

THREE — The end zone assault: Brees is the first player to connect for five touchdown passes against a Belichick defense. Nobody threw five TDs against Belichick’s Giants. Nobody threw five TDs against Belichick’s Browns. Nobody had thrown five TDs against Belichick’s Patriots.

The trend is not good: from 2000 to 2006 only Peyton Manning had thrown even four TDs against the Patriots (in 2003). Then Eli Manning threw four TDs in the 2007 season finale.

And then Peyton threw four TDs against the Patriots, again, just two weeks ago. And then came Drew’s aerial assault on Monday night, dropping bombs on the New England secondary like the 8th Army Air Corps over Berlin.

That’s two of the worst performances ever by a Belichick defense in the space of the past three weeks.

Can you say “wheels coming off the wagon”?

The road to Monday night

The worst part of New England’s embarrassing 38-17 loss to the Saints Monday night was not the once-in-a-lifetime statistical destruction.

The worst part is that you could see this moment coming down the tracks since 2005, chugging along inevitably, with only the Cold, Hard Football Facts warning of the destruction ahead (as we did in this space last year and again this year, in both cases before it was trendy to point out Belichick’s shortcomings as a defensive coach).

The seeds of Monday’s historic defensive downfall have been planted in a series of bad drafts, in a series of bad personnel decisions (including players signed and players sent packing) and in the assistant coaching exodus that has taken place every year since the last Super Bowl.

The Patriots have not made an impact free agent signing on defense since Rodney Harrison in 2003. They haven’t made an impact draft pick in the secondary since Asante Samuel in 2003. They haven’t made an impact draft pick on defense, period, since Vince Wilfork in 2004 (though 2008 Defensive Rookie of the Year Jerod Mayo could prove to be that next great stalwart).

You can even pinpoint the moment at which it all began to fall apart — in the wake of Super Bowl XXXIX in February 2005, New England’s last championship. Offensive coordinator Charlie Weis left for Notre Dame. Defensive coordinator Romeo Crennel left for the Cleveland Browns. (Both, of course, are out of work today.)

But it was in the personnel department that offseason when things begin to unravel.

The Patriots whiffed badly everywhere. In the free agent market, they signed the likes of career backup Monte Beisel and 35-year-old Chad Brown to play linebacker. The draft was no better: The Patriots selected corner Ellis Hobbs, safety James Sanders and linebacker Ryan Claridge. Hobbs today is a kick-return specialist in Philly, Sanders is a special teamer for New England, and Claridge never played a down in the NFL.

That’s a bad offseason, and bad offseasons in NFL personnel markets ALWAYS are felt on the field. The Patriots fell from second in scoring defense in the championships season of 2004 (16.3 PPG) to 17th in 2005 (21.1 PPG).

The Patriots since that day have struggled to find defensive talent, and they’ve struggled to field championship-caliber defenses.

They’ve fielded some decent units, sure, but certainly none to fear. The Patriots entered the Monday night game, for example, with what appeared on paper to be the second-best defense in football (16.4 ppg). But as we saw on the field, that number was just an illusion.

They’ve yet to come up big in a big game since the last Super Bowl season. They’ve yet to piece together a shut-down crew, the kind that beat up Marshall Faulk in Kurt Warner in Super Bowl XXXVI, or embarrassed MVP Peyton Manning in the 2003 and 2004 playoffs, or that made Donovan McNabb vomit under the pressure on national television.
 
Instead, since those days, the New England defense has folded like a bath towel time and again in critical moments.

Defensive geniuses don’t whiff on defensive draft picks year after year. Defensive geniuses don’t whiff on free agent signings year after year — hell, you could argue that reality TV star Junior Seau has been New England's most coveted defensive signing of the last three years. Defensive geniuses don’t watch their defenses collapse in critical moments of big games year after year.

And defensive geniuses don’t watch Drew Brees produce one of the great passing days in the history of the game against their team.