Asante Samuel boldly claims he changed the way Bill Belichick coaches football

The former NFL cornerback is taking credit for the Patriots’ success in the secondary.

As a Pro Bowler and two-time Super Bowl champion with the New England Patriots, Asante Samuel surely understands where his bread was buttered during the best years of his NFL career, which ended after the 2013 campaign. Playing under a monolith of defensive football in Bill Belichick, the cornerback never reached the heights he reached in Foxborough after departing for the Eagles in 2008.

That makes his latest statement all the more swaggering. He said on Twitter Tuesday that the New England secondary, which now features reigning Defensive Player of the Year Stephon Gilmore, owes him a true debt of gratitude.

Asante Samuel claims he made Bill Belichick a better head coach with Patriots

That’s pretty brazen. I’m sure the measured, famously civil sports fans in the Boston area will react to this with carefully-chosen words.

Of course, when you have four Pro Bowls, two All-Pro teams, and two championship rings to your name  to go along with a spot on the Patriots All-Decade Team for the 2000’s, you might be able to get away with being a bit confident.

Oh, so there’s that, too.

Belichick stans may be quick to suggest that it is rather Samuel who owes the best of his success to the iconic head coach. He’d likely respond with the fact that while he led the NFL in interceptions and passes defended in 2006 with the Pats, he later led the league in each stat again as a member of the Eagles, with whom he made the majority of his Pro Bowl appearances.

That doesn’t mean Belichick didn’t ultimately squeeze the sweetest juice out of Asante. It just means the ultimate truth is more complicated than any strict partisan might want it to be.