He has a sense of humor, and during his rare breaks from the game after the season, he’s actually quite engaging and amiable. But once he switches into football mode, you’d swear he was born with a rare birth defect that rendered him incapable of smiling.

The media put up with it for a while because he was winning, and that trumps everything. But after a while, it got tiresome, as did his reluctance to part with information. You’d think he’d mellow, if even a little bit, but he hasn’t.

To the fans, he comes off as cold-hearted and unsentimental. It doesn’t matter how popular or good a player is, if he doesn’t want to accept his assigned position in the team’s salary structure, he’s gone.

That attitude has made the Patriots great. Belichick is all about team, not individuals, and when they were winning their Super Bowls, we marveled at how selfless they all were and we congratulated Belichick as making something that was greater than the sum of its parts.

But now they’re seen as a machine, picking parts off the shelf, plugging them in, and grinding on, made more of cogs and gears than flesh and blood.

The cheating episode in the year’s first game against the Jets wouldn’t have harmed most teams. NFL fans are inured to cheating. They may burst with righteous indignation at a baseball player caught taking steroids, but a football player caught doing the same thing receives virtually no criticism.

Slide show   Week in Sports Pictures Flying on the hardwood, racing on the rink, getting physical on the gridiron, and much more. more photos

But this was Belichick who got caught and slammed with a $500,000 fine. Any other coach might have gotten the same fine, but he wouldn’t have taken the same criticism from fans and media. Belichick got skewered — mostly because people were delighted to see him get even a little piece of what they figured he deserved.

And now they want to see the undefeated Patriots get lassoed and hogtied, even if it means rooting for the Cowboys to do it.

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