INDIANAPOLIS – In a league home to J.J. Watt, Ndamukong Suh and others capable of considerable violence, the most intimidating figure is a 63-year-old who likes to cut the sleeves off his sweatshirts, although not because of an over abundance of muscles.

"Short arms," Bill Belichick said of the fashion alteration.

Bill Belichick greets Colts coach Chuck Pagano after Sunday night's game. (Getty) More

What was long suspected is becoming increasingly apparent: Belichick's ability to teach, coach, game plan, precisely exploit arcane rules and, most of all, rarely panic in the biggest of moments, cast a daunting shadow across the NFL.

The New England Patriots are now at an advantage not simply because what Belichick does is so smart but because what other coaches do is so stupid. At least when competing against him.

Rival coaches will, of course, dismiss this thinking, arguing that no one knocks them off their game. Perhaps they are correct. If so, this sure is a coincidence that keeps on happening. Consider just 2015:

There was Seattle's Pete Carroll deciding to throw rather than run from the one-yard line at the end of last year's Super Bowl. There was some strategic philosophy behind it … but that's overthinking things when you've got Marshawn Lynch. Either way, reading a play they'd gone over repeatedly in practice, Patriots cornerback Malcolm Butler intercepted the pass and delivered a fourth Lombardi Trophy to his coach.

There was Sunday, when Indianapolis Colts coach Chuck Pagano committed to being extremely aggressive in an effort to neutralize Belichick. That included a bizarre and ill-conceived trick punt play that New England never flinched in the face of, causing the Colts to foolishly snap the ball, turn it over on downs and give Tom Brady a short field for what would be the game's decisive touchdown.

Belichick being Belichick likely seeps into everything else too, whether it's Baltimore's John Harbaugh ranting at referees in last year's playoff that the Patriots were using illegal formations – they weren't – to Buffalo's Rex Ryan getting whistled for an unsportsmanlike conduct penalty and having his overheated team follow suit in Week 2, to Pittsburgh's Mike Tomlin fuming in the season opener over crisscrossed coaching headsets that by all accounts wasn't even Belichick's fault.

Real or imagined, many of the league's coaches are now reacting to what Belichick is doing, or to what they think he is doing, rather than just sticking to what they wanted to do in the first place.

All the while, Belichick tends to stand alone on the sideline, away from his team and assistant coaches, arms folded, headset on, taking all the action and nuances in as the picture of cool competency.

Even that becomes oddly intimidating.

____________________

Consider Tomlin, a Super Bowl winning coach himself. During the season opener at New England his headset began receiving the Patriots' radio broadcast. The league controls the technology, but that didn't stop Tomlin from bitterly commenting during the postgame press conference.

"That's always the case here," he said, causing another firestorm.

Yet in Week 5, when 18 seconds mistakenly ran off the clock during the fourth quarter in San Diego, causing the Steelers into a do-or-die last-second rush for a subsequent touchdown, he later shrugged the problem off.

Story continues