Patriots Porn: Belichick Gives a Wide-Ranging Interview on Football's Evolution, Special Teams, Christian Gonzalez, and Everything In Between
Well isn't this a pleasant surprise on week in June! The folks over at The 33rd Team (a good NFL draft resource that is Old Balls tested, Old Balls approved) helping to fill the quiet part of the NFL calendar with a 20 minute conversation with the man who is harder to get a sit-down with than King Charles this time of year? Mother may I? That's the content that'll help mark off the days until Patriots camp opens on July 26th.
I won't spoon feed you all the quotes, here. If you can't invest the 20 minutes, that's a you problem. Besides, it would be like trying to transcribe a talk by some great philospher. A Socrates. A Voltaire. A Norm MacDonald. The only way to truly experience these thoughts is in the man's own words, cadence, and inflection.
That said, here's a few bullet points worth noting:
On the coaches he'd most like to have coached against:
Nice try. But he's got too much respect for those who came before him and built this game to do anything but turn the question to whom he'd liked to have most coached with. Even though he would've tied the huge brains of the ones he mentions - Paul Brown, George Halas, Vince Lombardi - into balloon animals. And since he's too modest to say it, I'll point out that the modern ones he names, like Bill Walsh, Bill Parcells, Joe Gibbs, Jimmy Johnson, Mike Shanahan, were all on the receiving end of some of his greatest gameplans. Still, his humility is breathtaking.
On how the NFL will evolve:
A very interesting point about the recent evolution toward much more passing behind the line of scrimmage. The screen and bubble screens have been common for a couple of generations. But the RPO and the shovel pass that acts like a handoff but counts as a pass are still extremely fresh. And coordinators still have plenty more space behind the line to work with as a high percentage option.
On adapting defenses to modern offenses:
Here he offers a brief history lesson on dealing with Houston's Run & Shoot with the Giants and Browns, segueing into his current attempts to develop a 3 cornerback/3 safety look to match up against 5-wide attacks. Which will be something to note as we go through 17-plus games this year.
On legislating special teams out of the game.
There's no chance he was answering this one. Even though you know it kills a man like him, for whom special teams is a secular religion. Forgive me for my choice of words, but he's going to punt this question every time.
On the best players he's ever coached:
That he's coached the GOAT of offense in Tom Brady and the GOAT of defense in Lawrence Taylor is a great point, but by no means a surprise. However, the fact he includes Matthew Slater and calls him the special teams GOAT is. You'd be an idiot to argue with him. Although Slater's agent might a few minutes of GM Bill's time.
On his philosophy on special teams:
Listen for yourself. I'm no more worthy to summarize it than I would be to boil down St. Thomas Aquinas' thoughts on Christianity.
On his coaching journey:
Any story that begins with Ted Marchibroda giving him a raise to $25 a week I'm hear for. As when he talks about the staff he built in Cleveland and what he brought to New England, he's singing my son. And to anyone demanding he quit being stubborn and hire an assistant from outside his system, commit the rest of this to memory.
On how he'll use Christian Gonzalez:
This one is even more important that it was a week ago, given the impending disaster that is Jack Jones' legal trouble. So he's showing his likely CB1 the ropes. How to prepare. How to study the system. How to learn all the terminology. But HC Bill sees him as a perimeter corner who can work elsewhere as the situation arises. But it's all about getting good football players and figuring that out later, like he did with Carl Banks at linebacker alongside Taylor. I come for the optimism, and stay for the name "Gonzo."
On what he'd do if he wasn't coaching:
On this, I don't care what he says. Other than his adorable Lou Holtz story. The question itself is preposterous. It's a null hypothesis. If he wasn't coaching football, he'd be coaching football. There is no counter factual. In every multiverse, he's a football coach as well. And also, my close personal friend. So The 33rd Team can save this college acceptance interview question for some mortal coach who could possibly be doing some other thing with his life.
Still, thanks for the good time. We need more of this in June. Now let the man get back to Nantucket, cruising on VIII Rings, and plotting to harvest more souls in a couple of months.