Anyone who still maintains Bill Belichick’s unmatched Super Bowl record ought to come with an asterisk as a nod to his quarterback, consensus pick for greatest of all-time, must have turned off the television Sunday because the game was too “boring.”

This season in general and Super Bowl LIII in particular made this Belichick’s finest hour. It proved the coach at the very least deserves equal billing on the marquee of the greatest dynasty of the Super Bowl era.

Brady was ordinary in the Patriots’ 13-3 victory over the Rams at Mercedes-Benz Stadium, Belichick’s defense relentless, from start to finish.

Brady threw a wobbly interception on his first pass, and for the first time in his nine Super Bowls did not throw a touchdown pass.

Statistics, good and bad, can mislead, so take this for what it’s worth: Brady had his lowest Super Bowl QB rating of 71.4. His highest QBR (115.4) came in a 41-38 loss to the Eagles in Super Bowl LII, when he threw for 505 yards and three touchdowns and did not throw a pick.

The best way to rate a quarterback, naturally, is to count his rings, and Brady expanded his lead there with his sixth, two more than Terry Bradshaw and Joe Montana.

Belichick and Brady are inextricably linked in football history, so there’s no point in arguing which man deserves a bigger slice of the credit pie, but nationally at least, Brady generally has overshadowed the coach among football fans. That would be a very difficult case to make anymore.

In coaching his team to its fourth Super Bowl in five seasons, Belichick showed an uncanny knack for forcing foes to find different spots on the field to turn when he designed game plans to take away their favorites.

The dominance of the defense in the first half of all three postseason games deserves one more look.

The first time the ‘D’ took the field, given a 7-0 lead, the Chargers tied the score, 7-7, on Philip Rivers’ 43-yard TD pass to Keenan Allen.

Here’s how the rest of the opponents’ first-half possessions ended: punt, punt, punt, punt, punt, punt, punt, time expries on a sack-fumble for a 15-year loss, punt, punt, punt, punt, punt, punt.

And it’s not as if the Chargers, Chiefs and Rams were falling just short of the first-down marker. The distance to go for the first down on the 13 punts: 9, 9, 10, 10, 24, 1, 23, 8, 8, 7, 10, 16, 2. That’s fourth-and-7-or-more on 11 of the 13 punts. Incredible dominance.

How did it happen?

“Elite players and elite coaching,” said linebacker Kyle Van Noy, who had as loud a postseason as anyone on the team. In the three games, Van Noy was in on 15 tackles, had three sacks, two more tackles behind the line of scrimmage, four quarterback hits and a pass defended.

Nobody in the Super Bowl played better than Dont’a Hightower (two sacks for 15 yards, a pass defended and three quarterback hits).

At defensive tackle, Lawrence Guy consistently played well throughout the postseason against the run and pass (half a sack and a couple of QB hits), and Adrian Clayborn contributed a sack and four QB hits. Defensive end Trey Flowers had two sacks and six QB hits.

Stephon Gilmore had two postseason interceptions and five passes defended.

In the Super Bowl, Jason McCourty made two huge plays, Patrick Chung and Duron Harmon one apiece.

It was a defense loaded with players smart enough to apply sometimes complex instructions and tough enough to endure the rigors of practice.

“The coaches push us hard every day, even when we win,” Gilmore said. “They want us to be perfect. It’s a grind every day. I feel like no other organization does that like the Patriots do, and all that hard work is worth it.”

Belichick sets expectations high, never dumbs them down, and saves the smiling for the duck boat parades. It works to the tune of a 6-3 Super Bowl record in an 18-year span. Incredible.