For New England Patriots fans, he is Yoda — experienced, old, wise and someone they feel comfortable with entrusting their team's chances week to week and season to season.

For the rest of NFL followers, he is the leader of an evil empire who is willing to bend, if not break the rules to win.

Of course, it's Bill Belichick I am referring to.

Nine AFC championships and six Super Bowl wins are included on Belichick's resume, but some fans refuse to acknowledge him as a great coach.

I don't put any stock in the cheating. I find it hard to believe that the Patriots are the only team that tries to gain an edge.

When you are as successful as the Patriots have been this century, people are going to grab on to any rumor or notion of cheating that is made public. A lot of fans can't admit that the Patriots are just that good and they want a reason to explain away their success.

The most notable act of trickery the Patriots have been called out for under Belichick is Spygate. Following a 2007 game against the Jets, it was revealed that New England was videotaping New York's defensive signals from an unauthorized location.

Stealing defensive signals is common in the NFL. Former coaches Bill Cowher, Jimmy Johnson and Mike Shanahan have gone on record as saying their teams did it. The practice has been in place for decades and is not considered illegal.

Again, the Patriots got in trouble not for stealing the signals, but for the location from which they obtained them. Sounds ticky-tack to me.

Belichick's detractors also point to the fact that he has never won or made it to a Super Bowl without Tom Brady as his quarterback. “He was a horrible coach when he was in Cleveland,” they say.

Let's revisit Belichick's 5-year run as the Browns' head coach and see just how terrible it was.

The Browns were a dreadful 3-13 in 1990, the year before he took the reins. He coached Cleveland to a 6-10 record in his first year, a decent improvement for a team trying to climb back to respectibility.

Back-to-back 7-9 seasons followed. At that point, the Browns seemed stuck in neutral. But in 1994, they returned to prominence with an 11-5 record and a postseason berth.

That season, the Browns allowed an NFL-best 12.8 points per game. Belichick, who previously served as defensive coordinator on two Super Bowl title teams with the Giants, deserves much credit for Cleveland's defensive effort.

Cleveland went on to win its first playoff game in five years against, ironically, the Patriots. Its season ended the following week with a loss to Pittsburgh in the divisional round.

It was in the middle of the 1995 season that Browns owner Art Modell announced that he would move the team to Baltimore before the start of the 1996 campaign.

The Browns crumbled after the news, going 1-7 in their last eight games.They were 4-4 before that, certainly not a great record. But the Steelers, who went on to represent the AFC in that year's Super Bowl, were also 4-4 at midseason.

The point is that Belichick and the Browns still had a chance to make something of their season before the distraction of the impending move.

Belichick was fired after the season and did not turn up again as a head coach until being hired by New England in 2000.

With New England's victory over the Browns on Sunday, Belichick now has 300 career wins, including the postseason. Just two men have more — Don Shula and George Halas. Both are enshrined in the Hall of Fame and like it or not, Belichick will join them some day.

Derek Pyda is a staff writer for the Butler Eagle