Patriots’ Belichick has set the standard
Coach’s bond with team makes up for dour disposition,
HOUSTON He values the team’s overall culture ahead of its individual parts. He rules his team with an iron fist, and yet instils that team with a sense of family. He has hardand-fast ideas about how to run his team, but is never against learning and adding bits of others’ expertise to his own repertoire.
Yes, this is a description of the New England Patriots’ Bill Belichick, who can set himself apart Sunday by winning a record fifth Super Bowl title as a head coach.
It’s also a description of former coaches Chuck Noll of the Steelers and Tom Landry of the Cowboys and Alabama’s Nick Saban — as well as Gregg Popovich of the Spurs and former UCLA coach John Wooden and pretty much everyone else who has cemented him or herself on the Mount Rushmore of coaching.
“X’s and O’s are the price of admission,” says John O’Sullivan, founder of the Changing the Game project, who speaks often about the importance of coaching in society. “But great coaches, the first thing they do is connect. When you connect with people, they’ll run through a wall for you.”
This year’s other Super Bowl head coach, Dan Quinn of the Atlanta Falcons, has discussed his season-long quest to turn his group of players into a “brotherhood.”
Belichick will never be confused as warm-and-fuzzy, though maybe Vince Wilfork’s tweet after parting with the Patriots in 2014 painted the best picture about the sort of atmosphere the coach has created: “We are always family,” Wilfork wrote.
And while great coaches have some hard-and-fast rules about how they want to run their teams, the best of them are always keeping an open mind toward learning.
Famous are the stories of Belichick’s willingness to go the extra mile — especially in the film room — from the time he got his first NFL job, as an assistant to Colts coach Ted Marchibroda in 1975.
“The impression he made on colleagues was almost universally favourable — open-minded, incredibly hard-working, absolutely committed to being a little better every day, a master at using film,” David Halberstam wrote in his 2005 profile on Belichick, titled The Education of a Coach.