Fridays with Bill

by John Powers

  “But at the same time you wouldn’t necessarily start from scratch and teach a player who has a blank slate to do it that way because fundamentally you see some flaws in it. The biggest lesson I learned was with Everson Walls when I had him with the Giants. He came from Dallas and he had a very unorthodox way of covering man-to-man. His footwork was unorthodox and his eye control was not something that you would teach. That’s probably because not a lot of guys could do it. But he had his way of doing it and he could do it pretty well.

  Julian Edelman, ball in hand, trots to the sideline for a bit of consultation during a 2014 victory over Miami. (photo by Jim Davis)

  “One of the first things I told Everson was, ‘I’m not going to try to change your style but you have to understand what your responsibilities are on the defense and you have to perform those responsibilities. But I’ll give you some latitude in the technique and the style as long as you can get the job done.’ He said, Okay, I fully understand that. I want to meet the responsibilities of the position on the defense on a particular call but let me do it my way and I’ll get it done. I don’t know if I can do it your way because I’ve been doing it the other way for so long. I said, that’s fine, and the guy had 60 interceptions or however many it was. He did things differently than any other defensive back I coached. But he knew what he was doing. He knew where he had to compensate and generally speaking he got the job done on a very high-percentage basis.”

  SEEING THINGS

  “There are guys that when you watch film can look at it in the classroom and look at it in a book, they’ll give it to you chapter and verse, forwards and backwards. And then you get out there on the field and spatially here’s the same stuff we went over in the meeting, here’s the same thing we watched on film and it happens on the field and they don’t recognize it or they’re late to recognize it. And then there are other guys that don’t understand it in the diagram. They really don’t understand it. But when you get out there spatially and say, ‘Okay, this guy is here,’ they say ‘Oh, okay.’

  “We all have different ways of learning. But you get guys like [Tom] Brady and [Randy] Moss and guys like that, they get it at every level. You diagram something and they say, ‘Oh, yeah, I can picture that.’ You say, ‘You see this play and when this guy is here, you go there.’ And they say, ‘Of course I would go there. What else would I do?’ It just comes easy to them. They get out there on the field and they make adjustments during the game. They just instinctively know what to do. Sometimes they see it a lot quicker than the coaches do and that’s good for us.”

  INSTINCTIVE PLAYERS

  “Some guys just have a way of finding the ball. Tedy Bruschi, Mike Vrabel, Rob Ninkovich—those guys have a lot of production on the ball and it’s all different—it’s strip sacks, it’s fumbles, it’s fumble recoveries, it’s interceptions, it’s tipped balls. It’s a whole random variety of things but somehow they just seem to find their way. You could say that the ball finds them or they find the ball.”

  SITUATIONAL AWARENESS

  “It’s being instinctive. Like a basketball player knowing when to pull up, when to drive to the hoop, when to pull up for the jump shot, when he can make it to the basket and when he can’t and when to pull out. It’s all that stuff. Some guys have an instinctiveness and a capacity to do that without even being coached. You run a play and say, this is what we’re going to do on this play—boom, boom. Then you go out there and run a play and something happens that you didn’t even talk about. Some guys will do what they’re supposed to do and other guys will say, ‘Well, I should do this but here’s what they did so obviously I can’t do that, so I adjusted into something else.’ And it’s the right thing to do.

  “Lawrence Taylor was like that. Lawrence Taylor knew what every player on the field was doing. I’m not saying he was a coach but, ‘Okay, well, I’m here, this guy’s here, that guy’s there, so obviously that guy’s got to be over there, that guy’s got to do this.’ I think guys that try to memorize plays—‘Okay, I run this on that play, I run that on this play, I do this on some other play.’ And then it runs together and they make mistakes. Whereas, ‘Okay, I run this, well of course I’ve got to run this because that guy’s here, that guy’s there and that guy’s somewhere else. So where else would I be?’

  “It’s just easy for them. It’s just natural. Some players have a great capacity for it and other guys, you tell them to key one guy and they come off after the play and you say, ‘What did that guy do?’ ‘Oh, I didn’t see him.’ ‘Well, that’s the guy you’re keying.’

  The coach watching his defense protect the red zone against the Falcons in 2017. (photo by Jim Davis)

  “From Day One, you ask Tom Brady what happened after a play and he’d tell you eight things that happened. ‘I dropped back, the lineman flashed in front of me, the linebacker dropped wide, this guy slipped, he was over here, the other guy flashed on his side, I stepped up, this happened, that happened.’ You go back and watch the film and there are eight things that he said happened and that’s what happened on the play. You can see every one of them. This guy was pressed and then he backed off late, this guy rolled down.

  “Like I said, Lawrence was like that, too. Lawrence would go out there, come in after the series and say, ‘Coach, they’re not blocking it the way you said they were going to block it. Here’s what they are doing. Instead of him taking me, he’s helping. I can see that guy looking for me so if I come inside the center’s going to come off and he’s going to pick me up.’ You can look at the film and say he’s right. You could never get that from the sideline.”

  PLAYERS IMPROVISING

  “There are rules and there are things we all do but then there are things that happen on any given play or in games and situations that aren’t quite the way that they are drawn up and football players have to be football players and they have to react and make decisions and improvise and do the right thing within the context of their responsibility. Every player has to do that. Things happen not quite the way they were supposed to happen or your teammate doesn’t do it quite the way he was supposed to so you have to make an adjustment or he has to make an adjustment because of you.

  “Within that, you try to develop consistency within the overall team, the way it’s done. So there’s a certain degree of that that’s inherent in every player at every position. And then there’s also a certain part of it that when it takes away from your responsibility, trying to anticipate or react to something a little quickly, then it can cause you a problem. So you have to find that fine line. Every player has to do that. I’m sure each player can look back and find times where, ‘I was a little too aggressive on that’ and other plays where, ‘I knew it. I should have just hit it a little quicker.’ So it’s trying to find that right balance.”

  ADDING RESPONSIBILITIES

  “Normally when we talk to a player about taking on more responsibilities, whether it’s on the same side of the ball or a different side of the ball or in the kicking game, it’s with the idea that those responsibilities will give him an opportunity to get on the field more and/or increase his value to the team in terms of making the roster or, again, being on the field and having a bigger role on the team. I don’t think there are too many players that don’t want to play, that don’t want a bigger role.

  “Now when you make those moves, sometimes after the player does it they don’t feel comfortable or confident in taking on those responsibilities and it doesn’t work out. But you usually don’t know that until you’ve given it a try. The player and the coaches don’t know that, but you go into it feeling like, ‘We’ll give it a shot and see how it goes,’ then you evaluate it as you start to gain more information about the change. I can’t say that I’ve ever had too much resistance on that over my career. The intent is to not only make it better for the team but to make it better for that individual player. We can all remember plenty of examples where that
versatility has paid dividends for the players involved and the team. So that’s the intent. Sometimes it works out, sometimes it doesn’t and you go back to where you were.”

  REQUESTING MATCHUPS

  “You definitely have the guy who comes in here and says, ‘Can I get on No. 68 this week? I mean, I could kill him. Let me get over there on him.’ Or, ‘Let me cover so-and-so. I can really get all over this guy.’ Yeah, all right. How about taking the best guy? What about that?… I would think our guys like to go up against the other team’s best player. Sometimes that’s part of the game plan, sometimes it isn’t and that’s just something we have to sort out. I don’t think it’s a bad thing to want to take on their best guy, but I would say we’ve got a lot of guys like that…. But I’ve definitely seen the other side of that, too. ‘Even though I play over here at this position, if you put me over there against the guy on the other side of the line I think I can have a big day against him.’ Or, ‘Normally I would be covering this guy but if you put me over here on this other guy who’s not very good I think I can cover him.’ I’ve seen that, too.”

  POOR PERFORMANCES

  “Everybody that’s in the National Football League has had a bad day, every coach, every player. I couldn’t list anybody that hasn’t. We’ve all been through that. We’ve all had days where we haven’t performed well. There have been plenty of days in practice where we haven’t performed well, too. It’s not just unique to the game. You can go out there and not have a good practice or not have good plays in practice and that’s a part of football. It’s part of being a competitor, finding a way to correct the mistakes and move on and perform better in the next opportunity you get. We all face that. That happens to everybody that’s involved in this game. If you play at this level of competition, there are times you’re going to come up short. We’re playing against other good players, good teams, good coaches every week, too. They’re working just as hard as we are. They’re just as talented as we are. They’re going to make some plays. We’re going to make some. I think that’s part of it. You learn to correct your mistakes and move on.”

  NEGATIVE PLAYS

  “Of course you don’t want to see negative plays happen, but eventually they’re going to happen. You do want to see how players respond to those plays—a defensive player missing a tackle or giving up a completion or a receiver dropping a ball and things like that. Look, that’s unfortunately part of the game and seeing how people respond to that type of adversity or negative play [is important]. Do they go in the tank? Does one bad play become two? Does one missed block become three? Or do they bounce back and right the ship and then settle down and do a better job? That’s part of the evaluation with all our players and if they play enough they all have those plays. But it is interesting. We do talk about that, about how players respond when they have a bad play. How does that affect them on the coming plays?”

  GETTING PAST MISTAKES

  “We go out there, we all make mistakes, we all have plays that we wish we could have over again or do better on. You regain your balance after those and do it again and try to do it a little better the next time. You don’t lose your confidence, but the next time you go out there and have a high expectation, a high level of commitment to perform to the best of your ability. Inevitably you always come up a little bit short. Nobody plays a perfect game. Then you live with those, whatever the level of disappointment is, whether it’s 1 percent or 50 percent, whatever it is, and then you don’t lose your confidence. You go back, correct the mistakes and turn the page and move forward.

  “That’s where you want to be, but sometimes it’s hard. When you’re disappointed and you put a lot into it, those games that you lose, if you put a lot into a particular situation and it doesn’t work out, well there’s obviously a high level of disappointment, which there should be if you put a lot into something and it doesn’t work out well. You’re not just going to walk away and say, I don’t care. When you say you don’t care, it’s when you didn’t put anything into it because you really don’t care. So whatever happens, you just live with it. The ones you put a lot into and they don’t work out, it’s harder to get over those. But that’s what we all have to do.”

  CELEBRATING PLAYS

  “These guys work hard. They work hard every day, they work hard all week, they prepare for the game. If you go out and make a good play you should be excited about it…. When you do it together as a group, you feel good with your group. The guy who scored feels good for the guys who blocked for him. The guys who blocked for him feel good for the guy who scored and vice versa. You throw a pass, you catch it, somebody had to block, somebody had to run the route, somebody had to throw it, somebody else took the coverage to help somebody else get open. You intercept a pass, you had a good pass rush, other guys were covered. So there is a lot of team excitement on those plays. You see it on the sidelines. A guy on the field makes a play, you see the bench explode. That emotion naturally comes out with hard work and success. I don’t think it’s something you want to restrain. At the same time, there is another play. If the next play is a bad play, then that offsets it. There is a balance there in all that.”

  Belichick instructs the defense during the 2012 romp at Buffalo. (photo by Barry Chin)

  ROOKIE BONDING

  “Each rookie class has a little bit of its own camaraderie and attachment to each other because they go through the whole process, the whole indoctrination, learning process and everything together. A lot of things we do, we do as an entire rookie class. All the extra meetings, whether it be football, off-field things, or personal things, they all do those together. There’s a natural kind of support for each other and there’s a learning thing, too, where they’re sometimes more comfortable talking to each other than they are talking to a veteran and asking them a question that might be looked at as a dumb question. Whereas if you ask another rookie, he’s probably in the same boat you are on something like that. It is interesting how that works.”

  ROOKIE EXPECTATIONS

  During the Belichick era, the Patriots have had an average of eight rookies make their roster each season, the number ranging from as few as four to as many as 20. From May until training camp opens in mid-July, the first-year players attend mini-camps, development programs, a league premiere, and mandatory transition sessions to help them adjust to professional football before they start playing in earnest.

  “I don’t really have any expectations for any rookie players. We just coach them from the day they get here. We try to get every player to improve and learn our system and become a better football player in the NFL. That’s a process. Some guys [learn] at different rates. I’ve learned that through a lot of experience. Some players start quickly and fizzle out. Some players start slowly and come on strong. Some players are more steady than others. You really don’t know that until their rookie season is over, what the rate is or how it’s all going to turn out.

  “You just take it day to day, get better on a daily basis, and teach them all the things that you can teach them, get them the practice time you can practice them with, correct all the mistakes, and keep moving forward. That’s what being a rookie is in the National Football League. It’s a great learning experience every day, every week, and hopefully at the end of that rookie season the player has accumulated a lot of knowledge and experience and is able to use that as a good springboard for the rest of his career.”

  ROOKIE READINESS

  “Playing a young player regardless of what position it is, there are some considerations that you have to think about. If you put a guy in too early in a situation he’s not ready for, that he has almost no chance to succeed in, that’s not going to do a lot for his confidence or for anybody else’s confidence. That’s more of a coaching error than it is a player error. He’s just not ready. To put somebody in that you know is not ready to play, I think we all know what is going to happen in that situation. That really isn�
��t fair to the player.

  “Sometimes you have to do it out of necessity. Usually that’s not the case. Usually you find some other alternative…. I think confidence has a lot to do with it. Some players have confidence. They could strike out every time at the plate and that wouldn’t bother them. There are other guys whose confidence is a lot more fragile for whatever reason. It’s hard for an athlete to achieve at a top level without a good degree of confidence… confidence to the point where he can perform to his maximum ability and that’s a fine line.

  “Having no confidence, we’ve all seen those situations where a professional golfer can barely make a three-foot putt. It’s not ability. At some point it’s confidence or nerves or whatever you want to call it. I think there’s definitely something to that. It’s hard for the coach to control the player’s confidence. There’s a little bit of play in there but in the end the player has to control that himself. The best way for a coach to be confident in a player is for a player to go out there and play well.”

  The coach, as close to ebullience as he will permit himself to come, during practice. (photo by John Tlumacki)

  ROOKIE CONVERSATIONS

  “We talk to them on a regular basis, I’d say at least weekly if not more. In a lot of cases it’s a daily conversation with either all of them or groups of them. It’s because they haven’t gone through it. Everybody looking back, which I’ve heard many times as a coach, ‘Well, I wish I had known this,’ or ‘I wish I had realized that,’ or ‘I didn’t really know that.’ They still don’t know but at least we try to do a better job than I did back when I was with the Giants.