New Book Shows Us A Very Different, Kinder Bill Belichick

John Powers is well aware of everything that happens in the NFL and the country in general. That’s why he covered the Celtics, discussed soccer and became the best Olympic writer. This time Powers worked on “Fridays With Bill: Inside the Football Mind of Bill Belichick,” touching the head coach’s Friday press conferences. This is the book many fans wanted to read, and Powers did a good job by collecting all the info from Belichick’s Friday sessions.

Fans have seen Bill Belichick at his worst after every Patriots game. Most of the world sees Belichick as a cult, sullen, and uninformative person during and after games. He becomes a better person the next day. Friday is my favorite day, as Bill Belichick gets to talk about his greatest passion. Football. Is there anyone who loves football more than Belichick?

Belichick was raised by a football coach, and he has been part of the game since early childhood. The Patriots head coach knows more than football than anyone on this planet. “Fridays With Bill” gives you the perfect opportunity to get inside a great football mind.

The head coach loves football, and loves to share his knowledge with those who like to learn. This does not include inside info such as a football player’s injury status. This is privileged info, and Belichick addressed his attitude toward the injury report on Page 161: “Just because a guy is on the injury report and whatever he’s listed as, that doesn’t really mean anything . . . Honestly, I don’t even care what’s on the injury report. I really don’t even look at it.”

Have you ever been curious about the Patriots mantra “Do your job”? There is a great explanation on Page 42. “You’d rather do something that you’re good at but you have to do something that the team requires you to do. That’s what team sport is, that’s what football is. You put the team first. You do your job.”

If you check the material on Pages 81 through 84, you will get great insight into the roster composition. When Belichick adds a new player, it usually marks the end of a long evaluation and tracking. “The whole team walks out of Memorial Stadium, hits the WALK button, goes across 33rd Street, and walks over to Eastern High School, which had two blades of grass — dirt, glass, rocks.”

The Pittsburgh Steelers made a huge impression on the young Bill Belichick. “When you’re a young coach you’re (thinking) ‘Okay, who does things in a way that you admire or respect or want to emulate?’ Or, ‘What can you take from a good program to help you as a coach?’ Or, ‘If you ever get a chance, what would you do that they do?’ They were one of those teams. From the first year the Steelers had a very strong impact from the outside on my philosophy as a coach.”

On Page 157, you can read an interesting discourse on coaches: “Any time a coordinator changes, you go back to your notes for that coordinator, with the team he was at and what he did there. That travels with the guy . . . Depending on who the head coach is, you just have to look at it. Sometimes it matches up pretty cleanly. Sometimes part of it matches up, like maybe it’s the third-down package but their base defense is different or vice versa . . . The same thing in the kicking game, offense, defense. I think you definitely want to track those guys.”

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