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Glenn Ordway: First of all, Coach, our
condolences to your loss this past week.
Bill Belichick: Thanks.
Ordway: And to your family. I don't know if
you've had the opportunity to see it yet, but I think that you'll enjoy the
piece that they did yesterday on television. I just wanted to ask you
before we talk about today's game, I got a kick out of you and your dad
shopping for all of these football books, and how your dad would scold you
if you wanted to go spend a dollar when the book was 25 or 50 cents.
[Laughter]
Belichick: Yeah, I was willing to spend more than he
was.
Ordway: [Laughter] But it sounds like he developed an unbelievable collection of books. And now I understand that they're going to
be handed over to the Naval Academy. Is that true?
Belichick: Right. We're going to hand over both of our
collections together to the Academy. It will be over a thousand football
books—most of them more of a technical nature—which will make it the
largest private football book collection in the world. Obviously there's the
[Pro Football] Hall
of Fame and Library of Congress and all that, but it'll make it a very big
private collection.
Steve DeOssie: I'm sure your dad read them all, but have
you read them all?
Belichick: No.
[Laughter]
Ordway: We had Scott Pioli in here last
week and he was talking about Steve's book on how to scout a game and how to
break down a game. And I wonder, obviously—Scott claimed that you were sitting there
figuring out games when you were nine years old—how to break down a game
and find a weakness. Obviously it's one of your strengths, it's what people
talk about when they talk about Bill Belichick. How much of it came from
your dad, and, obviously, his work with his book?
Belichick: Well, when he wrote the book I was eight
years old, so I wasn't really too much a part of that. But what he did,
probably like any kid with their father, when he brought work home, I was
interested in it. And then he would do things like when he would give the
scouting report to the team, I would be able to come and tag along with him
and sit there while he gave the scouting report for the team that he had
scouted to the Midshipmen—Bellino and Staubach and all those
guys. So that was kind of cool to hang around. Then on Tuesday nights—the Midshipmen are on a pretty tight schedule, so I think they had an
hour on Tuesday night and that's when they would come over and watch film—he would get the whole team in there.
It was just him, and the team, and
me. Then he would put the projector on and go through the team and point out
things that they should be aware of, whether it was formations or splits or
stance or whatever. And so as he did that I definitely started picking
some things up. Then once a year I would go on a scouting trip with him. We would go to whether it was Virginia or Penn or Penn State or Pitt or
whatever, and we'd usually go to Army for one game, too, and my mom would go
on that. So the three of us would go to New York and then go out to dinner
and go to a play or something Friday night, and then go up to West Point for
the game on Saturday. But then there was always one other trip that I would
take with him so it was just me and him. And it was a pretty eye-opening
experience because when we got into the game which, you know, we were there
early, and into the press box, he was pretty well organized, and he was all
set to go on whatever. Let's say he was scouting Virginia, then he was all
set to go on them. We would go through pre-game warmup, and we would go down
to the field and he'd get the cadence, he'd get the signals, he'd check out the
guys that were supposedly injured, see what they look like and all that. So
by the time the game started, there was already a lot of information that was
in the book. Then as the plays would come off, he'd really be able to diagram
the entire play. Now, he wouldn't sit there and draw out everything, but he
would draw, you know, which guard pulled what the backfield action was, what
the three guys that ran a route. Then he would come back and touch it up
later, like at halftime. But he was able to get, really, basically what all 22
guys were doing. And there were other scouts there from other schools that
were watching the game, and they were really scrambling: 'What did that guy
do?' 'What was that play?' 'Who was that?' 'Who caught that ball?' and that kind of thing.
So it was really pretty obvious why his reputation was what it was. Just
watching him work, it was pretty interesting. Then usually by the second
quarter or so, then he would pretty much have the game at that
point. They'd come out and line up in their formation and he would just
say, 'This looks like their off-tackle play,' or 'This looks like that wingback
reverse.' Or he would pick up the other team's signals, and let the coach signal
them in, and say, 'I think they're going to blitz here,' or 'This looks
like their two-deep coverage.' So really in a lot of cases he pretty much
had the play down before the ball was even snapped. And then that really started
getting me to understand about how you could predict those things, if you had the right information and
you knew
what the right keys were. Then as I got older he would give me things
during the game like, 'You watch the two receivers at the top, I'll watch
the two guys down here. Tell me what the route was,' or 'Tell me what they
did.' Or, 'If this guy on defense, what these two guys did. Watch the
linebackers, did they blitz or did they just cover their man?' Whatever it
was. So in terms of just—it wasn't like I made up any game plans or
anything, I mean that would be not even anywhere remotely accurate. But he
did include me in what he was doing. Then a lot of times when he would bring
home a film, he would maybe bring home an extra projector and give me one
half and he'd take the other half—draw up the formation, draw up the play.
Then, of course, he'd go back in and check it
and show me the things that I didn't have right—maybe what the play was supposed to be,
but they just messed it up—and try to draw it the way it was really
supposed to happen. All those things were a big part of the learning
experience. But I think the big thing that I learned was to be able to see
all 22 guys, to be able to put the whole game together and not just segment it into one or two little
details, but the whole thing is interrelated. And how, at a game, you really
can and should be able to see the entire game that's going on, not just one or two guys.
Ordway: Would your dad call you after a game
like yesterday's game, and tell you what he saw in the course of that
game?
Belichick: No, he never really did that. Although, we
might talk about the game, but no,
he wasn't that type to call up and say, 'How come you guys didn't do this?'
or 'How come you didn't do that?' But when we would talk about the game he
might say, 'What happened on this play?' 'What happened on that coverage?' or 'What went
wrong here?' 'What did you guys do?' 'What were you thinking about in
that situation?' and that kind of thing. So we would talk about that. But no, he was never the type to,
I don't even want to say second-guess, but kind of just, before the paint was even dry
say,
'Well, what about this?' 'What about that?' Even at games that he was at, which he
was at usually two or three a year up here, and in Cleveland, which was when
he was a little bit younger, sometimes a couple more than
that. But he was always just supportive, not really trying to be in the way or overly analytical.
Fred Smerlas: What was your age when you first
submitted a game plan to him? Did you ever just throw together a surprise?
Belichick: It was funny, when he came home Thursday
night—Thursday night in college is the same as
Friday night in the NFL, so Thursday night the game plan was in, everything
was done, and Friday was just a walkthrough—he would bring home a copy
of the game plan from one of the offensive and one of the defensive coaches.
They would write on it, 'To Bill, here's the
game plan for (whoever—Michigan or Notre Dame or whoever Navy was
playing).' And they would kind of circle the plays that were new, like the
plays that were in for that week. So that was kind of cool to see the
game plan, also kind of see what things they put in that were new and different
and try to understand those. So I was kind of hanging around there enough
where I sort of knew what was going on, but some of his other coaching
associates and some of the other assistants kind of, they sort of helped take
me under their wing, too. Guys like Lee Corso, who was at Navy in '66 and
'67, people like that that would, when I would come into the office to hang
out and just hang around there, they would talk about stuff or give me
new plays or show me things that were new. So that was a great experience.
Ordway: Scott told us a great story last week
about how your dad and mom would do it together. They would sit there with
all the colored markers and sit down, and he was amazed at how organized
they were. And they did a funny thing with the piece that they did yesterday
where, when he was writing the book your mom would sit there and she would,
apparently, type it for him. But if there were contradictions or stuff that
she didn't understand, she would throw it back into his face. [Chuckling]
Belichick: Yeah, well my mom was a language major, and
she taught language in college. During the war she worked for the Map
Service and translated the different European maps into English when the
Defense Department got them and all that. So she's pretty good in language. So when he wrote the book, that was her
thing, that grammatically she would straighten it out. But also, she figured if she could
understand it, then maybe some high school coach or whoever was reading
it would be able to understand it. But if it was so far over her head, then
she thought that it needed to be rewritten. So they would battle back and
forth on that a little bit. But in
reality, she wrote the book. [Laughter in the background] He did the diagrams and he certainly put the
thing and the ideas and the concepts together, but she really, she wrote
it.
[Laughter]
Smerlas: She understood football pretty well,
too.
Belichick: Yeah, well she did because she grew up with it for so many years
in our household. I mean, if you don't want to talk about football then
you're kind of out of a lot of conversations.
[Laughter]
Ordway: Well you'll like this piece because it
was, I thought, a terrific tribute to your dad. As is the David Halberstam
book, as well...
Belichick: Thanks.
Ordway: ...which gets into a lot of his life and
things that he did before you came along, which is, I think,
fascinating stuff.
Belichick: Well, I'm glad that Halberstam was
able to capture the essence of...
Ordway: Pretty good writer.
Belichick: (Yeah.) ...what that was about. It
was pretty
funny, I told this story last week. We were going down to scout this game,
and I'm just kind of reading the press clippings and all that, so I
asked him about the team—I think it was Virginia, actually—and I said,
'Well how about this linebacker they've got, he's pretty good, huh?' And
he
said, 'Who's that?' And I said, 'This Palmer guy.' He said, 'Oh, he's alright.
He's okay.' I said, 'Well it says he's got
106 tackles in 5 games.' And he looks over at me and says, 'Bill, they must have counted the ones he made in
practice.' [Laughter] I said, 'Okay.' So we go to the game, we're
sitting there, it's about the middle of the second quarter, and they run a sweep. 'Tackle by #58 George Palmer.' He looks over and he says, 'There's his
first one.' [Laughter] So we
were riding home and kind of flipping through the stat sheet, the play-by-play,
kind of ruffling the papers, flipping through it. And he knows what I'm looking for,
I kind of know what I'm looking for, and I look down there and there it
is: two
tackles, one assist for Palmer. [Laughter in the background] But that kind of taught me, too, that
he was truly a scout. He went by what he
saw and what he knew, not by reputation or by stats or what some other
public opinion was. He went by what he saw and what the tape said and what
he knew the player or the team's abilities
were. It was good to kind of sort that out and not be swayed by it, because
in a lot of cases there were guys that had big reputations that may be a
little overrated, and vice versa—that had had no reputation and that were
really pretty good players.
DeOssie: That seems to have directly affected some
of your personnel decisions, too. There seems to be some guys that might not
be pure numbers guys coming in, but
you saw them as good football players.
Belichick: I just think that's a good way to look at
it. You can be the only guy that doesn't really think that this player is
that good, or you think he is good, whatever it is. But that's your conviction
based on whatever information you have, rather than go by all the press clippings and
the stats
and how many All-American votes the guy's got and all that.
DeOssie: Your dad wouldn't have been a combine guy
then?
Belichick: No, I don't think so. And it was funny,
too, because back when he played, of course the people that made the
All-American teams and stuff like that, it was all publicity. Nobody really saw everybody play. I can remember many times him
saying, 'Well, you know, this guy's in the Hall of Fame,' he'd say, 'You know,
that guy really wasn't that good. This guy was a lot better. I played with this guy and he was much better.' But it was a lot of hype and a lot of PR to do those
All-American teams and Heisman and all that stuff back in the '30s,
'40s, '50s, when nobody really saw anybody play that much.
Pete Sheppard: Did he ever script out plays,
like 10, 15, 20 plays to start the game?
Belichick: Well, now of course when he coached,
there were no offensive and defensive coaches. You coached everything. Everybody went both ways.
But then around the late '50s and early '60s then, and then when Welch came in the '70s, he
basically did two things: he was either the scout, where he went to all the
future teams' games, and then he coached the JV team—they were the team
that simulated those plays against the varsity; or he coached defense—he
coached the secondary, he coached linebackers. So those were his two main
things. He wasn't really an offensive script coach from when I remember it.
Now, I'm sure before that it might have been a little different story when
he was coaching at North Carolina and Vanderbilt, or even Hiram. But
defensively he's...I think the two words that
describe him the best as a coach were tough but fair. It was funny, over the
last few days, or the last
week or so, a lot of his former players have come up or written and
talked about experiences they had with him, and it was the same thing: how
he yelled at them and how he really got on them, how he just wouldn't settle
for their effort that wasn't the best, but how much they respected that and the fact that he was fair with them,
but very demanding and very tough.
Ordway: It's been written that he was
such a good coach that he could have pretty much picked his own destination if he wanted to
coach—head coach—at a big school. And that maybe he stayed there, at
Navy, 1) because he loved it, but 2) because he wanted a stable environment for you.
Do you look back at that? You, obviously, have been very ambitious because
you've had a couple head coaching jobs here.
Belichick: Yeah, well I don't think there's any question about that,
Glenn. I think that when he made the decision to stay at the Naval Academy
on a permanent basis, which is when he became a professor in the physical
education department as well, that that stabilized it. Sure, up until that
point I'm sure that he had a number—I know he had
a number—of opportunities to either go to a different job, or a higher
paying job, or go into pro football, or like Eddie Erdelatz, the coach
who brought him to Navy, went to be the head coach with the Raiders, and
things like that. I know those opportunities were there. But he got done
quite a bit of moving early in his career—a couple years at Hiram, then
three years at Vanderbilt, then a couple years at North Carolina, then off
to Navy. He's 35 and already hopped around a few times and just decided how
much he really wanted to do that. Back in those days, that was 7500, 8000. So
doing a lot of moving, it's not like you're getting real rich.
Ordway: It's very difficult, obviously,
when you lose a parent, and I would say this: in the last few years, he had
an opportunity to share in your success. I don't think any of us are going
to forget the picture where Tedy Bruschi is
pouring the Gatorade cooler over you, and Steve as well.
Belichick: Right. That was a chilly moment.
[Laughter]
Ordway: I would say so.
Belichick: It's been a thrill for me to
grow up as I did and be part of his football world—again, the Roger Staubachs and the Joe Bellinos and the
Tom Lynchs and all those players and coaches that went through there. Then
in the later years it's kind of been the other way around. I mean I can relate to that from his point of view,
because that was pretty much my experience when I was younger.
Smerlas: Who was his favorite player that he ever coached?
Did he have one, like a Roger Staubach?
Belichick: Yeah, I'd say Bellino, Lynch,
and Staubach. Bellino, for what he was as an athlete, as a player, as a
competitor.
Staubach, who went to prep school and really had to work hard even to
get into the Academy, and certainly for what he's done and the life he's
lived before, during, and after the Naval
Academy. And Tom Lynch, who was the captain of that team, whose brother Jim
played for Kansas City...
Smerlas: Yeah.
Belichick: ...and is up on the Ring of
Fame there in Kansas City. Who I think he considered the best leader that he's ever
coached, which—that covers a lot of ground. So, I think those are probably
three of his favorites.
Smerlas: Who was the most fun, as a kid,
for you, would goof around the most?
Belichick: Oh, well with Staubach, he would throw passes all
day. He would stay out after practice and throw comebacks or throw curls or
throw whatever, so you just stand there—and sprintouts and that kind of thing—so you just stand there and catch the ball. He'd throw it until it got
dark and they had to go in and go to meals and go to
class. But he would be out there forever. It was a lot of fun with him. The
kickers—my dad coached the punters and even really helped me with
Jennings and Landeta, Tom Tupa, even Kenny Walter. Kenny Walter sent me a
real nice note about his relationship with my dad when he was here. That was
touching. But it was always good with the kickers because you stand out
there and they'll kick all day.
[Laughter]
Belichick: They stand out there and shag
kicks.
Smerlas: They're not tired.
[Laughter]
Belichick: So, it was just fun to be
around. Looking back on it, I didn't know any better but, it's the Naval Academy. That's where admirals and the leaders of our country have
come from. The attitude and the leadership and the teamwork and the
toughness that they showed as Midshipmen at the Naval Academy, I didn't
realize—I thought
that was the way it was supposed to be. Looking back on it, you
realize how exceptional that group of kids then, men now, really were, and
what a great example that was to see how hard they worked and how much
teamwork and leadership was really involved in that group of men. But that's
the military. That's the way it is, and that's the way it's got to be.
Sheppard: The Naval Academy bestowed the
rare honor of your father's burial at the Naval Academy, also.
Belichick: Right. That was a very
special exception to their policy that they made, and very much appreciated
by our family. He kind of overlooks the Severn [River] and some athletic fields that
he spent quite a bit of time on, so it's a good place for it.
Ordway: Certainly he leaves you with a
lot of memories, there's no question about that.
DeOssie: Good man. . .
Belichick: I'd just like to thank the
fans for all the support—the letters, cards and so forth—that I've
received from all of you out there. It's meant a lot, and that support's
been a big source of strength for myself and our family. So I thank everyone
and appreciate it. Thank you. |
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