bill belichick quotes

"Yes, I think it's pretty amusing. Some of the things I do are pretty dumb. I appreciate the compliments, but I wouldn't use that adjective." –On being referred to as a genius

His first opening day game Sept. 6, 2007

About Lamar Hunt Dec. 14, 2006

About Don Shula Dec. 14, 2006

Being wired for sound for an NFL Films piece Dec 11, 2006

How he feels about his job Dec 1, 2006

His two years as an assistant coach in Detroit Nov. 30, 2006

Watching film on the next week's opponent Nov. 27, 2006

Bo Schembechler Nov. 24, 2006

Who he is a fan of Oct. 10, 2006

How he was influenced by Paul Brown Sep. 29, 2006

The coaching staff he assembled in Cleveland Dec. 29, 2005

About Wellington Mara Oct. 26, 2005

team chemistry
"I don't think you can orchestrate chemistry. I don't think anybody can tell you what friends to have, who you should like, who you should hang out with. Those things just happen. You try to bring people together that have the same interests and the same values and the same point of view. Not the same, but similar. That has a way of coming together."
06 aug 2007

watching instant replay during a game
"I don't even know how the replay system works – the technology of it, who does what and all of that. I really just try to coach the game, and I can barely do that."
17 nov 2006

being a good team
"Anybody in this league can go out and make a play or two – there's plenty of talent on the field. But if you want to be a good team you have to sustain it play-after-play, week-after-week. That's the big challenge."
02 oct 2006

having a vision when building a team
"I think anytime you're a head coach or you're a general manager or you're a personnel director, you have a vision of where your team is going to be in two, three, four years, and you want to try to move toward that point. You can never get it all at once, and usually, however long you think it's going to take, you can usually add a couple of years to that."
21 sep 2006

what he thinks when he takes a job
"Every job I've taken I've always taken with the approach that it's going to be the last one and I'm going to be there…I know that's not realistic, but I've never taken a job where I've said, 'Okay, I'm going to go here and then I want to get out of here in a year, or two years.' I've just never done that. Kind of the 'bloom where you are planted' type of philosophy."
21 sep 2006

winning and losing
"When you win everything isn't great. Usually when you lose everything isn't terrible. A lot of times when you lose, you just didn't do enough good things to win. It wasn't like everything was bad. When you win everything is not good. There are mistakes in wins, too. The longer you play, the longer you coach, the more you realize that. There's a fine line. You just have to do as many things right as you possibly can to give yourself the best chance, but ultimately there is room for improvement every week."
18 sep 2006

fatherhood and coaching
"My family and my kids are important to me, and I'm sure they are to a lot of other coaches as well. You make time for that, no matter what the other demands are. Nothing really comes ahead of that."
13 sep 2006

his cameo role on Rescue Me
"I don't think it's that hot. It was a lot of fun. It was a lot of fun. Dennis [Leary] and Lenny Clarke, they're great guys and it was a lot of fun. It was a lot of laughs. … Lenny and I go back a little ways. He invited me over and I accepted. Dennis was very gracious about the whole thing and kind of stuck me in there, which it was fun. It was fun being in there with Phil [Esposito]."
wearing makeup for television
"They globbed it on at the Super Bowl this year. No, I've been through that before. That's the hardest job in football – trying to make me look good."
22 aug 2006

lacrosse
"I love it. It's the fastest game on two feet. … I grew up with it. It's fast, there's contact and there's skill. I think when you combine those three elements in a game, it's an exciting sport to play and it's an exciting sport to watch. There's an appreciation for all three of those things. … Not that I've seen everybody play, but … I'd say Jim Brown and Jimmy Lewis would be the two best that I ever saw. [Carl] Tamulevich on defense."
22 aug 2006

if he ever envisions himself in the Hall of Fame someday
"No. Let's just see if we can get the team to get off on the count and get 11 guys on the field on punt return right now. No."
07 aug 2006

who he measures himself against as the best
"I don't really think of it in those terms. I really think that when we walk out on the field every week it is our organization and our team against the team on the other side of the field. Each of us has a job to do. Nobody can really do anybody else's job. We just have to do our own and find a way to pull it all together and score more points than the other team. That's the way I see it on a weekly basis. It's teams playing teams. I know there are individual matchups, but it is teams playing teams."
07 aug 2006

individuals and situations
"I deal with every player in every situation on an individual basis. The way it is one week doesn't necessarily mean that's the way it is the next week, or the following week, or anything else. It just depends on what each situation is. I think you have to deal with it independently. They're not all the same. I think the players on the team, we all have a clear understanding of that because we've talked about it collectively many, many, many times. It's always going to be that way."
10 nov 2005

being called "the best coach in the NFL"
"I don't really care about that. I'm really concerned about what our team does. We all have a job to do here—players, coaches, assistant coaches, trainers, everybody—and our focus is to try to put the best team on the field and to be competitive. Obviously, I appreciate a compliment, but what it comes down to is how our team performs against the opponent that we're playing against. There are a lot of things in this game that I can't do, and there are a lot of things in this game that other players, or other coaches, can't do either. They just have to do their job."
12 oct 2005

how he relates to players
"I've become a little more aware of some off-the-field things—family, where they are in their careers, the personal side of it, rather than just straight X's and O's, technique [and] how to play a play better."
"I'm probably not the most sentimental coach in the league."
07 oct 2005

individuality
"I think every player is unique. Tell me two players that are alike. Tell me two people in this room that are the same. Do we have identical twins in here? Tell me two people that are alike. Find them. Just show me where they are. There aren't two people that are alike. That's why we're all different. We're all individuals."
28 sept 2005

team building
"The building of the team is a step-by-step process. Mini camp's important, offseason program's important, training camp's important. It's all part of it. And whatever you have to deal with, whatever changes there are, then collectively, as a team, you manage them."
13 aug 2005

practice
"Practice preparation becomes game reality."
02 aug 2005

comparing one season to another
"This year's team is this year's team, and the challenges they have to meet will be different from the ones that any other team has had to meet. I think that goes for every other team in the league, as well. That is just the way it is in the NFL. That is the way it is in sports, period."
01 aug 2005

the essence of a team
"I think it's more a function of the team than it is the individual. The essence of a team is that you really want to do something because all your friends and teammates are counting on you. You don't want to let the other guy down. It's more of a military philosophy. Any team that's good, that's really where the motivation is. In the end, when you have a commitment to each other, that's really where the power is."
29 apr 2005

to President Bush
who remarked he was disappointed the coach didn't wear his sweatshirt, but that he was glad to see that he owned a tie: "Is this a roast?"
13 apr 2005

dealing with the situation at hand
"Whatever it is, it is. You just try to take the situation at hand and do the best you can with it. When it is over, recalibrate, reload and go again. That's where we've been all season. We never sat there and thought, 'Well, if this happens, where are we going to be two months from now?' You just think about, 'Here's who we're playing this week. What are we going to do? What's our best chance to do it?' You jump off the ship and start swimming. You don't really worry about where you're going. You're just trying to make good time."
04 feb 2005

being defending champions
"We're not defending anything."
30 jan 2005

being compared to Vince Lombardi
"It's very flattering to have my name mentioned with his name. I don't really think I'm deserving of that. I think it's really stretching it a little bit."
28 jan 2005

building a dynasty
"Really all we're trying to do is win a game here."
20 jan 2005

agreeing with Tony Dungy's comments regarding a Monday Night Football skit
"If preserving the integrity of the game and presenting it in the right way involves getting lower ratings, then that's what we're going to have to accept. If that's what we have to do to, if that's the deal, then that's the deal. This can't become the XFL."
19 nov 2004

film study
"I think I had an appreciation for it early. A lot of times, guys don't watch film until they get to college. But I was 10 years old and studying it. Film was important to me."
24 oct 2004

superstitions
"When I was with the Giants, the players used to pull that stuff on me. One week, if we broke a meeting 10 minutes early and won, then the next week they'd say, 'You know, we broke that meeting on Thursday 10 minutes early.' I would always say to Lawrence Taylor, who went to North Carolina, 'Lawrence if that was all there was to it, Duke would be national champions.' There's more to it than that. But that's the way it was with the Giants because Bill [Parcells] was like that. If we did it one way and won, then the next week, if we were about to do it differently, someone would say, 'No, no, last week we were going that direction in teamwork.' I personally don't care, other people do. I just don't want people thinking that's why we won or lost the game because in the team period we were going in a certain direction. … And the only thing the players remember is something easy we did and happened to win. If we did something hard one week and won, they'd never bring that up. Nobody would ever say, 'We did that 1-on-1 tackling drill, remember?' It was always, 'We were in shorts,' or 'We ran four sprints instead of eight sprints.'"
24 oct 2004

their winning streak
"What streak?"
19 sept 2004

the details of his non-football life
"I don't say I go to great lengths to keep them private but I don't go to great lengths to make them public either."
08 sept 2004

his casual dress on the sidelines
"It's all clean. I just try to be comfortable."
08 sept 2004

watching a tape of Super Bowl XXXVIII for enjoyment
"I definitely enjoyed it. It has a happy ending."
27 aug 2004

his time in Cleveland
"I didn't walk away from there saying I did a bad job. Not at all. We took a bad team, made it pretty good, made the playoffs, had a bad year in the most off-the-charts negative situation maybe in football history, got fired. It just wasn't a good mix between Art and me."
09 aug 2004

not making the playoffs in 2002
"I don't think we played or coached well enough (in 2002). The year before, we executed better at critical times. When the bar was raised (in 2002), we didn't rise with it. We went from 11-5 to 9-7, we missed the playoffs on the third tie-breaker, and we had the same record in the division and against the NFC, but we just weren't good enough. In the end, that's all it was."
28 jul 2004

speeches
"Short speeches make long friendships. I learned that a long time ago."
10 may 2004

teamwork
"Teamwork is the ability for you to count on somebody else, and them to count on you. Whether it's two people or 100 people, it's all the same. We have a term: 'One die, all die.' If somebody makes a mistake, everybody pays a price."
being a leader
"Troy Brown is without a doubt one of the best leaders I've ever been around, and he never says a word. It's not about who talks the loudest, who says the most. It's about attitude. To be a leader, have a good attitude, be positive, help out your teammate."
how someone could thank him for his recommendation
"Don't send me flowers. Don't send me a box of candy. Your thanks to me for the recommendation is to go do a good job. I definitely don't want dinner for two at Joe's restaurant. In my business, there's only two things you really own: your name and your reputation. I don't have any jewelry. I don't wear a watch or a ring. When you're on the football field, it's not about where you came from. It's not what you have. It's all about performance. That's all that matters."
03 may 2004

complimenting Snoop Dogg's outfit during the walk-through
"Snoop's got me beat on fashion. I can't keep up with him."
02 feb 2004

his post-graduate year at Phillips Academy in Andover
"I think the biggest adjustment was being around so many talented people. You see so many kids with talents in music and art. You had kids whose parents ran Fortune 500 companies. … Those were things I never really thought about. I realized early on in Andover that if I was going to fit in I would have to work harder and discipline myself. … I left there a different person. It opened my eyes in a lot of ways."
25 jan 2004

reiterating one of Ted Marchibroda's pet sayings
"It is better to be prepared and never have the opportunity than to have the opportunity and not be prepared."
22 jan 2004

his first job in the NFL
"There were four coaches. We all stayed at the same hotel. I got up at seven in the morning and we all drove to the stadium together, talked about football and stuff. When I got there, I worked primarily with the defense, broke down all the film, did all the scouting reports, then worked with the special teams coach to help set up things with him, ran the scout team in practice, ran the special teams scout team in practice. Then I did the practice schedules, and between 11 and 12 (at night) I would drive Ted and Whitey (Dovell) and George back to the hotel. It was 18 hours a day of solid football, nothing but football. From 7 a.m. until midnight. … It was awesome because every minute was a great learning experience for me."
22 jan 2004

when he started breaking down game film
"I felt comfortable breaking down film as a teenager. … I did some my first year with the Colts in a job I didn't deserve. I wasn't being paid anything. I wasn't worth anything."
20 jan 2004

credit
"All the credit's got to go to the players. We've got a good football team, and I'm fortunate to be coaching a lot of great players."
18 jan 2004

the coach-owner relationship
"To me, that's the No. 1 relationship I have to have. You can talk about the coach and the quarterback, or the coach and this guy, but ultimately it starts with the coach and the owner."
18 jan 2004

not accepting the head coaching position with the Jets
"I knew I did the right thing and I didn't know where my career was going to go. I knew what wasn't going to happen. … All the things I said then, frankly they've all come true. Every aspect of the organization that I commented on, it looks to me like that's the way I saw it then and that's the way it turned out. … I can't really worry about what other people say. I had to do what was right for me, and that's what I did."
16 jan 2004

his first few years in the NFL
"The way I started out was pretty unusual. At the end of my first four years (in the NFL), I had four years on special teams, a year with wide receivers and tight ends, two years of being like the quality-control guy on defense, a year with primarily the secondary and another with the linebackers. That was tremendous exposure to a lot of different coaches and systems and philosophies."
22 dec 2003

how he's changed
"I've learned to delegate things more and take a broader stroke. I'm more cognizant of things going on with our players' outside lives. And I've used our captains more to listen to the messages from the team and to get across my message to the team."
16 nov 2003

two things about himself
"I think you can always say two things about me. Pressure does not bother me. And I'm not afraid to make decisions."
16 nov 2003

if divisional games are more important
"We only have 16 games. All of them are important."
03 oct 2003

what he talks about before the game
"We talk about winning. We talk about doing what we need to do to win. That's what we talk about. We talk about the game plan. We talk about the strategy. We talk about what we need to do to win. That's what we talk about before every game."
28 sept 2003

his old reputation
"In Cleveland is where a lot of that old reputation started, and that was a situation where I had an adversarial relationship with the team and the media. I made winning football games the No. 1 priority, and everything else was a distant second. It took me time to learn that some of the things I could have handled better. I could have granted more access for the media and more freedom for the players. I'm not as tough as I used to be. You could say I've mellowed."
15 sept 2002

about Joe Bellino
"I was standing there with Joe Bellino, a guy who won the Heisman Trophy, and people were asking ME for MY autograph. I was embarrassed. Every time somebody handed me something to sign, I felt I should be handing it to Joe to sign. … When I was a child, going to football practices at the Naval Academy, Joe Bellino provided my first exposure to greatness. At that charity event, it was an ironic situation to be in, people asking me for my autograph while I was in his company."
05 sept 2002

the undoing of the Giants after their first Super Bowl win
"I saw it happen in '87. Seven guys wrote books. Everyone thought we could just slap the team back together and win, and it was a disaster."
15 aug 2002

comparing himself to ten years ago
"The things I can't control, I now accept. The one thing I think I've figured out in this job is, when they put your name on the door with HEAD COACH on it, a lot of people in the building, not just players, will look to you for direction, and you'd better be ready to give it. I learn something in this job every day, every week, every year. I'd better be a better coach than I was 10 years ago."
13 feb 2002

working in an occupation besides coaching
"I'd be in some type of business. I majored in economics in college. But football is a business, and it's management. I guess that's where I'd fall. The thing about football that's so much fun is the competitiveness. It's the opportunity to go against Mike Martz, Joe Gibbs, Tom Landry, Mike Ditka. Playing on the same field with them as a strategist, that's a thrill that you can't put a price on. I love it."
01 feb 2002

reflecting on his Cleveland years
"I was a little harder than I needed to be on the players. You can have discipline and they can get the message without going as far to make a point. … The other thing in Cleveland was that I thought I was too patient with players who were a problem … and it wasn't fair to the team. Now, I'm not going to make a snap decision. I'll give them a chance. But if they get too many chances and they are still not coming around, nothing against them, I just think they'd be better off in a different environment … regardless of their talent."
01 feb 2002

being detail-oriented
"I'm kind of a detail-oriented person, and I don't mind doing the details. But I found through time that I'm better off not getting involved in those things, so I can do a better job of managing the team. What I found out is that a lot of people do those jobs better than I would have done anyway."
31 jan 2002

his newfound popularity
"One of the things I've learned is that you can be 16-0 and there will be people who hate you, just as you can be 0-16 and there will be some people who will defend you. That's always the way it's going to be. Knowing that, it's easier just to do your job and hope people like what they see. I don't think I can be 100 percent of what everyone wants me to be."
if he feels vindicated
"It's not about being vindicated. It's about making progress. At the beginning of minicamp, it was, 'How can we have a better minicamp?' During training camp, it was, 'How can we have a better training camp?' When the season began, it was about being better tomorrow, being better next week, how can we correct our mistakes. That's all I've worried about."
17 jan 2002

criticism
"You're going to be criticized whatever you do. I just think that's the job. You have to make decisions that aren't popular. If it's fourth and 1, half the people in the stands want you to go for it, the other half don't want you to go for it. Whichever way you decide, you're going to make people angry. At that point, I get paid to make the decision. I'll make them."
24 nov 2001

what they will be judged by
"I think that talking isn't going to do it. Fans are going to judge me and judge our football team by what we do and what our performance is, and that's what we should be judged by."
27 jan 2000

being compared to Don Shula
"I hope he's not insulted."
5 feb 1991