Fridays with Bill

by John Powers

  GAME-DAY COACHING

  “Number one, getting the most important things handled, whatever they are. It could be what you’re doing, it could be what they’re doing, it could be the weather conditions. Whatever the most important things are, making sure that you start at the top. And, also, you don’t have all day. You don’t even know how long you have. If you’re on defense, the offense could be out there for a seven-minute drive. They could be out there for a 30-second drive. So you’ve got to prioritize what you’re doing so that you get to the most important things first so if you’re running out of time you haven’t used your time inefficiently.

  “Number two, there’s what we’re doing versus what they’re doing. A lot of times, making sure that you’re right is more important than identifying what they’re doing. Until you got that cleared up then you’re kind of spinning your wheels in the sand, and you’re not making any progress because you don’t really understand exactly what the issues are. In the game situation, that [all] changes.

  Belichick with former head coach Bill Parcells before the Super Bowl showdown with the Packers. Belichick won his first two Super Bowl rings with the Giants as Parcells’ defensive coordinator before rejoining him in New England as assistant head coach. (photo by Jim Davis)

  “You have the information from players which is, they’re in the heat of battle. You have information from the press box, as much of an overview as you can get. You have sideline information. Sometimes information, you don’t see it quite the same way so you’ve got to sort all that out. Then there is the balance of fixing what it is in the rearview mirror and looking ahead. ‘Okay, we’ve got to take care of these problems; here’s what happened.’

  “But at the same time you’re spending all your time on that, some of that is not even relevant, because the next time you go out there, ‘Okay, what are we going to do? We’ve corrected those problems. Maybe we’re going to make a different call or maybe we’re going to be in a different situation. How do we handle that?’ So there is the balance of new information versus analysis of previous information…. What information is important, where do we start, how do we get the most information across in the least amount of time and making sure that we get the information to the right people?”

  GAME-DAY BUTTERFLIES

  “Every year I walk out on the field before the game and I think, ‘This will be a little better this year,’ and it never is. I think everybody has them [butterflies] and then the ball is kicked off, you start playing, and you kind of settle into it. It’s good to get that first play over with and just get into the game. But the buildup, the anxiety, and the butterflies—that’s the perfect word for it because that’s what they are.”

  PSYCHING UP

  “I think in the end the games are won and lost out on the field by the players. You can go in there and beat your helmet against your locker before you go out on the field, hold hands, chant, kick chairs, and break blackboards, but as soon as the ball is snapped you do your job better than they do theirs or vice versa…. I think you can go in there, take a sledgehammer and break up the cinder blocks, but I don’t think that helps you block them. I don’t think it helps you tackle them. I don’t think it helps you do what you need to do from a football standpoint. If you can’t do that then I think the rest of that is minimal.”

  MANAGING EMOTIONS DURING GAMES

  “Playing emotionless is not good. When you’re emotional, when you have a lot of energy, you’re on a higher alert, but there’s a point where that can go over the edge and be detrimental to where it’s more about that than it is about the execution of your job. So there is a fine line there between poise, composure, decision-making, and energy and emotion and enthusiasm. They’re all good and they’re all important but there is a balance there. In terms of decision-making, I think you’ve got to make decisions based on what’s right. Not where your heart is, but what’s best for the football team.”

  FOOTBALL vs. BASEBALL

  “The difference [is] you can’t run out the clock. You have to get them out. It’s a tough nine outs. Joe Torre told me that and Tony La Russa verified it. You have to get them out.”

  NEW BEGINNINGS

  “Every year is different. Every year is a great challenge, great opportunity. Every time it comes around it’s nice to be able to go up to the plate, get a turn at bat.”

  2. Players

  What every Patriot learns as soon as he arrives in Foxborough is that there is one immutable rule: “You put the team first,” said Bill Belichick. “You do your job. You do what the team needs you to do to win and that’s what our team does.”

  Belichick wants smart and versatile players who are willing to embrace changing roles. “He’s a football player,” is one of the coach’s highest compliments. Receivers may be transformed into defensive backs, quarterbacks into receivers. Starters may be put on special teams.

  “All of us end up doing things at some point that maybe you’d rather not do, you’d rather have somebody else do,” Belichick said. “You’d rather do something that you’re good at but you have to do something that the team requires you to do. That’s what team sport is, that’s what football is.”

  The team’s Next Man Up philosophy assumes that every player is ready to step in at any moment, just like Malcolm Butler, the obscure, undrafted cornerback whose goal-line interception in the final moments against the Seahawks saved Super Bowl XLIX.

  “Everybody’s got a job to do and when you’re called upon to do that job, everybody’s expecting you and counting on you to be ready to do it, whatever that happens to be,” said Belichick. “Everybody needs to be ready to go.”

  The coach expressing annoyance on the sidelines during a tight home game with Buffalo in 2012. “The things that cause you to lose, you have to eliminate.” (photo by Jim Davis)

  DIFFERENT PERSONALITIES

  “We have 53 different personalities on the team. That’s probably a good thing. You don’t want them all to be the same. They just have to blend in and respect each other. We all have our own personalities and I think that’s great for the team as long as there’s mutual respect and it’s done in a respectful way within the team context. I don’t try to shape or judge anybody else’s personality. They are who they are.

  “Different people have different styles, playing styles and emotional levels and all that kind of thing. Somehow [you create] a blend of those personalities into your team. That’s what creates that team. Each team is different, unique. It’s made up of different people every year and sometimes personalities are added, some aren’t there and they mesh slightly or maybe not so slightly and that creates the personality of your entire team.

  “I don’t think there’s any science to it. That’s not anything I’ve ever tried to create—‘Oh, we need this kind of personality on this team,’ or ‘Oh, we don’t want that kind of personality on the team.’ If they can blend together and be part of the team and do their job and be productive then that affects the personality of that group of players. I don’t think that’s a bad thing.”

  SCOUTING OTHER LEAGUES

  “We scout every league to some degree. We scout all the players. We know where most of the players are but occasionally you find them somewhere else and we at least scout them. Not as heavily as college, where the majority of players come up from, but there are other places to look for them, whether it’s the Arena League, Europe in the spring, that kind of thing.”

  UNKNOWN PLAYERS

  “I think every team has a guy [where everyone thinks,] ‘Where was he? What happened to him? How did he end up?’ How does Steve Neal end up starting in this league? He never played high school or college football. I bet you just about every team we have played this year has a guy like that. It is interesting. It’s a very inexact science. You have some guys come out, they are three-time All-Americans, they are All-This, they are All-That, and they never played
a down in the NFL. Then you get other guys that don’t play in high school, that don’t play in college, they can barely play in Division Whatever, and here they are playing in the National Football League. So, it’s inexact.”

  BASKETBALL PLAYERS

  “I had many conversations with Bob Knight about that when he was at Indiana. I would say that the big thing for most basketball players is, in general, they’re quicker than they are fast. When you get out there and time a lot of those guys in the 40-yard dash they’re slow. They might look fast on a basketball court, but we have such a much bigger field that most of them don’t have the speed to play at our level.

  “They have quickness and a lot of times they have exceptional quickness. But when it just comes to straight flat-out speed that’s where a lot of times in the scouting part of it the deficiencies come up. You go see a basketball player and say, ‘This guy has great hands. This guy has great quickness. This guy is strong. He’s competitive.’ Then you time him and he runs 4.75–4.8 and you’re like, ‘What are you going to do with him?’”

  BRINGING IN PLAYERS

  Player acquisition in the NFL begins on the first day of the year and never ends. Free agents can be signed on January 1, the trading period begins in mid-March, and rookies are drafted at the end of April. Like the rest of the league’s coaches, Belichick is constantly looking for players who can improve his roster and makes a point of knowing who’s available.

  “When you bring the player onto your team you want the player on your team. So whether it’s an injury or a position change or a lack of experience, whatever it is, you feel like you can make that player work in your team or in your system. If you don’t feel that way, then you shouldn’t bring him on your team. That’s not saying we’re right on every player. We’ve made plenty of mistakes with players, bringing them onto the team and so forth. Every team in the league does that. That’s part of the process. You try to make as few of those as possible, but it’s an inexact science.”

  ESTABLISHING VALUE

  “Each player has to establish his own value to the team in whatever form that is. Ultimately, when you put together the team, all the jobs have to be accounted for somehow. It doesn’t have to be by this person or that person but somebody has to do it. Somebody has to cover kickoffs. You have to put a kickoff team out there, so who is that going to be? What group of people, what combination of people is that going to be? You figure that out and maybe that plays into the final decision. Or maybe you have that pretty well covered and it’s the kickoff return team or it’s short yardage and goal-line or whatever it is. In the end you have to take a look at all those things.

  “They’re all factors. That’s how we try to put together the team. Look at all the jobs that have to be done, try to figure out where our depth is and if there’s one void there then you have to figure out how you’re going to fill that. Is it change your scheme or find somebody to do it on your roster or find somebody that isn’t on your roster to try to do it? Those are the issues.”

  Belichick gobble-gobbling during the 2010 Thanksgiving game at Detroit while officials sort things out on the field. (photo by Matthew Lee)

  TEAM FIRST

  “When you sign up to play football, it’s a team sport and all of us have to give up a little of our individuality or give up a little bit of what we personally like for the good of the team. And that goes for every player and every coach that’s a part of this. If an athlete wants to do his individual thing then play an individual sport. Be a swimmer or play tennis or go do whatever you want as an individual sport. It’s no problem. Team sports are team sports. All of us end up doing things at some point that maybe you’d rather not do, you’d rather have somebody else do.

  “You’d rather do something that you’re good at but you have to do something that the team requires you to do. That’s what team sport is, that’s what football is. You put the team first. You do your job. You do what the team needs you to do to win and that’s what our team does. That’s what our players do and I have a lot of respect for them. That’s why they’re on the team, because they have that attitude. I don’t think there’s anybody in this organization, player or coach, that everything’s exactly the way they want it to be.

  “Some things are and some things maybe you don’t want to do but you have to do them because they need to be done and it’s your job. You want to be part of a team, then that’s part of the responsibility you accept—not only accept but embrace and understand that’s what it is and you do it. A lot of people who don’t understand team sports maybe can’t relate to that. I don’t know. When you sign up for football that’s what you sign up for.”

  ACCEPTING ROLES

  “You give up some of your individual preferences or individual control you have to play the great team game of football. If you want to go out there and run track or swim or throw the shot put or play tennis or whatever it is, great. There’s nothing wrong with that and you control everything. You control how you practice. You control when you practice. You control how hard you hit the ball and how soft you hit it or whatever. Play golf. Then you’re your own team, but when you buy into a team sport, not just defensively but offensively and in the kicking game, practice for the show team, practice for the other side of the ball, so forth and so on, then you make a commitment to the team.”

  DOING YOUR JOB

  “Everybody’s got a job to do and when you’re called upon to do that job everybody’s expecting you and counting on you to be ready to do it, whatever that happpens to be. So whether that’s a player, a coach, whoever it is, things change from game to game, from year to year, and sometimes those roles change based on game plan or other situations and everybody really just needs to be ready to go. If you’re a player that prepares well and your teammates count on you and you’re there to deliver, whether that’s one play or 60 plays or third-down plays or fourth-down plays or first-down plays, whatever they are, you just prepare. And when you get the opportunity you go in there and perform to your best level. Hopefully that’s good enough.

  “I think the players do a good job of that. They do a good job of preparing. They do a good job of understanding that their role might change from week to week and whatever they’re asked to do, they try to do for the benefit of the team. To have a good team that’s what you need. You need everybody to sacrifice some personal preferences or individual goals or however you want to look at it in order for the team to have success.”

  PLAYING TIME

  “What players need to understand is there’s only so much that they can control. There are some decisions that are coaches’ decisions and playing time is one of them. All a player can do is go out there and prepare and do his best and then the coaches make the substitutions and that’s their job. It’s not a player’s job to do that. I think the things that are in a player’s control they should work hard to control them. Things that are out of their control, for the most part it’s a lot of time and energy worrying about something that you don’t have any control over and it’s probably better that they don’t get too wrapped up in that.”

  LEARNING STYLES

  “We all learn differently, we learn at different rates. We do everything. We teach it verbally, we teach it on paper, on the blackboard—not that there’s blackboards any more, but as a figure of speech. We show it on film, we walk through it and we obviously run it in practice. Some players need to see it—see it on film, see it the way it’s going to look. Some players can verbally process the information and the assignments. Some players need to spatially see it—‘Okay, I’m here, you’re there, he’s there.’ They actually physically need to see the relationships, the space. Sometimes it’s the quarterback saying, ‘Look, here’s what I see, here’s what you have to do.’ ‘Oh, okay, now that makes sense.’ Sometimes you have to see it from the quarterback’s vision or the quarterback has to see it from the receiver’s vision.

  To
m Brady and Belichick, both bound for the Hall of Fame, savoring the proceedings in the 2014 home blowout of the Bears. (photo by Matthew Lee)

  “We use all the teaching techniques and certainly as an individual coach if you find that one technique works better with one player and another technique works better with another player, then you somehow divide your time separately or make sure you do it both ways in your presentation. I’d say that’s what good coaches, good teachers do—they find ways to make sure that the students, the players in this case, are able to get and process the information. But we all have different ways and styles and rates of learning. Not everybody is the same. That’s not a criticism of one way or the others. It’s just the reality of it as a teacher. You have to be able to do it differently.”

  INDIVIDUAL MECHANICS

  “Any time you look at an individual skill such as passing, kicking, punting, a golf swing, something like that, each person’s physicality is a little bit different. Their mechanics may have some variation and so there are a lot of different styles. You look at the golf tour. Not every swing is exactly the same but all of those guys are pretty good.… There are certain fundamentals that are inherent in good passes, good kicks, good punts. The way that the ball is released and the angle and the spin on the ball and the delivery and so forth…. You try to teach the players the basic fundamentals and if they can adjust their mechanics in a way to improve and still feel comfortable with it then we try to do that. And if it’s an adjustment that they’re really not comfortable making for whatever the reasons then I think you just have to decide if you can live with what the deficiencies are in the mechanics.

  “If the punts are good but they’re done in a little bit of an unorthodox way and they’ve satisfied what you want the punter to do then you’re probably going to be happy with it. If they don’t and you can’t change it because that’s just not the makeup of the player then you’re probably not going to be happy with it…. There are players that use techniques and do certain things that you wouldn’t coach a player to do if you were starting him off or if you were talking to a group of players and you’d say, ‘Okay, this is fundamentally the way we want to do something.’ It’s the exact opposite of the way that another player is doing it but the player is very successful doing it that way and so you don’t change the guy who has his own way of doing it if he is successful and he’s productive.