For the second consecutive day, the GOAT is moving on.

As clear as Nick Saban owns the title of the greatest college football coach of all time, the same can be said about Bill Belichick when it comes to the NFL.

But while Saban will be spending next football season overlooking the Atlantic Ocean from his $17.5 million Jupiter Island home, Belichick does not appear to be done.

Only with the Patriots.

Belichick, 72, was the architect of a two-decade run in New England that blows away any in NFL history and is one of the top five in the four major sports, joining the Celtics, Canadiens, Yankees and Bulls.

While his 302 wins (266 of those with the Patriots) is third all-time, what separates Belichick from Don Shula, Tom Landry, Chuck Noll, Vince Lombardi and everyone else is a postseason record that is not close to being matched.

Belichick's six Super Bowl championships and 31 playoff wins (13 losses) are the most all-time. Among the top 15 coaches in postseason wins (11 or more), only Joe Gibbs (.708) has a better winning percentage than Belichick's .705. And Gibbs coached in 20 fewer playoff games.

While Shula was winning an NFL record 328 regular-season games, his postseason resume includes two Super Bowls but a record barely above .500. His 19-17 record includes more postseason losses than any coach.

Belichick's legacy and genius are complicated. There is the reticent, scowling man in the hoodie with cut-off sleeves who stalked the sideline every Sunday during the fall and made every reporter's job more difficult.

While few were more disliked, none was more successful.

The Patriots' dynasty started with the controversial tuck rule that allowed New England to advance in the first playoff game under Belichick, which resulted in his first Super Bowl.

There was the serious and embarrassing Spygate scandal and the less serious and almost laughable Deflategate accusations. But before and after each, the Patriots just kept on winning.

17 AFC East titles, six Super Bowls

Belichick was hired by Robert Kraft in 2000 to replace Pete Carroll. In 2000, he used the 199th pick in the draft to take Tom Brady. In 2001, Brady replaced an injured Drew Bledsoe in Week 2.

About four months later, the Patriots were Super Bowl champions and the NFL's greatest dynasty was born.

Belichick's Patriots dominated the AFC East for 19 years, raising division titles flag for 17 of those and winning at least 10 games in all but one (9-7 in 2002).

That led to nine Super Bowl appearances and six titles.

Through it all, Belichick continued to evolve. With the greatest player of all time running his offense, he constantly surrounded him with a mix of young emerging players and veterans, some of those seemingly past their primes but rejuvenated once they joined the Patriots.

Among them: Corey Dillon, Randy Moss, Darrelle Revis and Junior Seau.

Then there are those whom Belichick knew he could turn from ordinary to productive better than anyone in the league. Players whom other organizations had given up on came to New England and flourished ... like Wes Welker, Rodney Harrison, Mike Vrabel and Danny Woodhead.

Not all of those gambles worked, as the failed experiments with Albert Haynesworth, Chad Ochocinco, Cam Newton and others showed.

But Belichick wasn't afraid to take chances. And it went both ways. Nobody was better than Belichick at gauging when a player's return on the investment had run out and it was time to part ways.

And he did so in a cold-blooded way, without remorse.

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Belichick tore down and rebuilt New England multiple times during his run. Looking at the roster from the first to the final Super Bowl, you could say four different versions of the Patriots played in Super Bowls.

While Brady is as much a reason for the Patriots' success as Belichick, the same can be said about every NFL team with long-term success.

Belichick's success was more than Brady. If the argument is that having Brady takes away from Belichick's coaching genius, wouldn't we have to say the same about Vince Lombardi, Chuck Noll, Bill Walsh and others?

Belichick surrounded Brady with Super Bowl-quality talent for 19 years. And not just on offense. During that stretch, the defense was top 10 in points allowed for all but three of those years.

Shula had Dan Marino for 13 years, most of those years coinciding with a dynamic receiver tandem of Mark Duper and Mark Clayton.

The two went to one Super Bowl together — and lost.

Belichick won as many Super Bowls as Shula won playoff games with Marino.

Biggest mistake giving up on Tom Brady

The end of the Belichick Era in New England was ugly. In the last four years, he lost 38 games, which is more than 45% of his losses during his first 20 years with the Patriots. The biggest mistake was believing that Brady was done after the 2019 season.

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Brady then went to Tampa Bay and won his seventh Super Bowl.

The Patriots made the playoffs the second season after Brady's departure and missed out on the final day of the regular season in 2022, but that just gave the organization false hope and masked what would be a major decline in 2023.

It was the worst year of Bill Belichick's career. But not one that takes away from his claim as the greatest ever.

Tom D'Angelo is a sports columnist, reporter at the Palm Beach Post. He can be reached at tdangelo@pbpost.com. Follow him on social media @tomdangelo44.

This article originally appeared on Palm Beach Post: Bill Belichick leaving New England Patriots as greatest NFL coach of all time