ATLANTA — By now, the argument about greatest NFL coach ever should be done. It’s Bill Belichick.

Nobody can match Belichick’s résumé, and his game-plan innovations have changed the league. Los Angeles Rams coach Sean McVay is universally praised, and for good reason, but he has the challenge of his career on Sunday as he tries to outwit Belichick in Super Bowl LIII. It will be Belichick’s 12th Super Bowl, three as an assistant and nine as a head coach.

With two of the best coaches in the NFL about to face each other, let’s look back at the five greatest game plans of Belichick’s historic career.

5. Patriots find a way to throw off Patrick Mahomes

The Patriots have been so good through the years, they’ve rarely had to win on the road in the playoffs. They had a tough challenge in this season’s AFC championship game.

Against Chiefs quarterback Patrick Mahomes, who threw for 5,000 yards with 50 touchdowns and will win NFL MVP later this week, Belichick got aggressive. The Patriots blitzed a lot, often generating pressure right up the middle, and played man coverage. They successfully used cornerbacks to cover tight end Travis Kelce, and speedy receiver Tyreek Hill was quiet with Devin McCourty keeping an eye on him from a deep safety spot. The Chiefs were shockingly held to 32 net yards before halftime. Mahomes lost 43 yards on three sacks. The Patriots led 14-0.

“They challenged us. They came up and played man. Not a lot of teams have this year,” Mahomes said after the game. “They put people in our face to see how we responded. The first half, we struggled. We couldn’t make anything happen.”

The Chiefs started to win some of those matchups against man coverage in the second half, but the first half was key. As was the Patriots’ offensive plan. The Patriots, who passed very well against the Chargers in the divisional round, ran 46 times. They held the ball for 43:59 to 20:53 for the Chiefs. Fullback James Develin played 41 snaps, a season high, and second tight end Dwayne Allen played 27 snaps as the Patriots relied on heavy sets.

The Patriots did what they had to do to get the win. They squeezed out a 37-31 upset in overtime to move on to the Super Bowl.

4. Patriots get physical to slow down Peyton Manning’s Colts

One of Belichick’s best game plans forever changed how the game would be played.

In an AFC championship game at the end of the 2003 season against the Peyton Manning-led Colts, the Patriots didn’t have a complicated plan but a smart one. They pressed the Colts receivers and were as physical with them as the rules would dictate. Manning, who was white hot in those playoffs, was intercepted four times in a 24-14 Patriots win.

“This is probably the most simple game plan that we had,” cornerback Ty Law said, according to Sam Farmer of the Los Angeles Times. “Just go out there and stick them and beat them up at the line of scrimmage.

“If you watch those guys all through the season and postseason put up those big numbers, you see a lot of guys running through the secondary. We said we were not going to let them do that to us, we’re going to challenge them more so than other teams, and let the best man win.”

After that season, the Colts complained about the Patriots’ physical style. That led to an increased emphasis on defensive backs grabbing receivers the following season. The game has changed tremendously as a result, with passing numbers skyrocketing due in part to officials cracking down on physical play by defensive backs.

3. Giants stop the 49ers’ three-peat bid

The San Francisco 49ers were going for a three-peat at the end of the 1990 season, with a great offense featuring Joe Montana and Jerry Rice. The Giants, with Belichick as defensive coordinator, held them down.

The Giants focused on pressuring Montana while taking away big plays, almost exclusively using a fifth defensive back long before that was the norm.

“We weren’t worried about the run; we knew we had to stop Montana,” Giants linebacker Pepper Johnson said in the game story from Bernie Miklasz of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. ”We got after him. I don’t care who you are — even the greatest quarterback — you won’t be successful with pressure in your face. That was the key to this game — we got to Joe Montana.”

It worked. The Giants hurried Montana often and knocked him out of the game in the fourth quarter on a huge hit by Leonard Marshall. Due to injuries suffered in that game and complications afterward, Montana would play in only one game over the next two seasons. The 49ers hit only one big play, a 61-yard touchdown to John Taylor in the third quarter. Most of the time, Montana looked indecisive as the Giants switched up coverages.

“The Giants have done an excellent job, they’ve done an excellent job of throwing Montana out of rhythm on this series,” then-CBS commentator John Madden said early in the game after the Giants forced a punt. “They didn’t let him throw the ball, they didn’t have anyone open … the [Giants] didn’t give Montana any lanes to throw in.”

With New York’s offense controlling the clock, the Giants got one enormous break when Roger Craig lost a fumble late in the game. That led to a game-winning field goal and a 15-13 victory.

The Giants’ final two games (and also the divisional round, when they surprised the Bears with a 4-3 scheme after going 3-4 most of the season) were coaching masterpieces. The brilliance of Belichick’s NFC title game plan is obscured by an even better one in the Super Bowl.

2. Bill Belichick’s Hall of Fame-worthy Super Bowl XXV plan

You know you’ve concocted a good game plan when it ends up in the Pro Football Hall of Fame.

To slow down the Buffalo Bills’ fantastic offense in Super Bowl XXV, the Giants needed to do something radical. And they did, often using only two defensive linemen and a lot of underneath defenders. They were daring the Bills to keep running the ball with future Hall of Famer Thurman Thomas. It seems counterintuitive to let an opponent feature one of the greatest backs ever — it’s said Giants defenders were incredulous when Belichick introduced the plan by announcing the team would win if Thomas rushed for 100 yards — but it was brilliant.

“I think the running game was the least of our concerns in that game,” Belichick said, according to the Giants’ 25th anniversary series on the 1990 team. “Thurman Thomas is a great back. We knew he was going to get some yards. But I didn’t feel like we wanted to get into a game where they threw the ball 45 times. I knew if they had some success running the ball, they would stay with it. And I always felt when we needed to stop the run, we could stop it. And the more times they ran it, it was just one less time they could get it to [Andre] Reed or get it to [James] Lofton, or throw it to Thomas, who I thought was more dangerous as a receiver, because there’s more space than there was when he was a runner.”

The Giants shortened the game with their running attack, as they did the week before against the 49ers, and the Bills offense didn’t hit many big plays. When Scott Norwood missed a field goal at the end, the Giants had a championship with a 20-19 upset. Considering the greatness of the 49ers and Bills that season, it would be very hard to find a better two-game stretch by a coaching staff in NFL history.

1. Patriots target Marshall Faulk, beat Rams in Super Bowl XXXVI

Over the years, the Patriots have been praised for taking away one thing their opponent does really well. That probably traces back to Super Bowl XXXVI, when they decided to limit Marshall Faulk.

A play about 10 minutes into the game, right after Faulk came out of the backfield for a short gain on a catch, summed up the Patriots’ plan. Willie McGinest lined up in what is normally a pass-rushing spot, outside left tackle. Instead of rushing, he ran straight to Faulk, who was offset in the backfield, and hit him. Left tackle Orlando Pace set up like normal, ready to pass block, then seemed confused when McGinest ran wide of him to hit Faulk.

All game Patriots defenders would find Faulk, especially when he lined up in an offset position, and hit him before he could get into pass routes. The Patriots traded pass rush to get physical with Faulk. Faulk was good in that Super Bowl, but he never killed the Patriots with any long plays. He had 130 yards on 21 hard-fought touches.

In the book “Games That Changed The Game,” former NFL quarterback Ron Jaworski said it was “the best-conceived game plan I had ever seen.” Most teams focus on the quarterback, or try to take away a little bit of everything. Belichick figured that by nullifying Faulk, the most dangerous skill-position player in the NFL at the time, they could handle the rest of the Rams, mostly with extra defensive backs. The Patriots also rarely blitzed, after that didn’t work against the Rams in a regular-season meeting. Belichick’s plan threw off the timing of the Rams offense; many times Kurt Warner held the ball too long in the pocket, and the Patriots hit him often. Faulk, who caught at least 80 passes in five straight seasons from 1998-2002, had four catches against New England. The Rams’ great offense put up only 17 points.

By now we know how that game turned out. The Patriots were huge underdogs but won 20-17 on an Adam Vinatieri field goal as time ran out. The Patriots executed very well, but it was a magnificent game plan from Belichick that gave the Patriots their biggest edge.

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Frank Schwab is a writer for Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at shutdown.corner@yahoo.com or follow him on Twitter!
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