Fridays with Bill by John Powers

Author:John Powers
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Triumph Books
Published: 2018-09-24T05:00:18+00:00

Belichick and Tom Brady embrace after the most unlikely Super Bowl triumph over Atlanta in 2017. (photo by Stan Grossfeld)

6. Opponents

As the son of an assistant coach who literally wrote the book on football scouting, Bill Belichick is renowned for his meticulous preparation for the Patriots’ opponents. “We don’t have a 162-game schedule,” he said. “We play 16 games. Every one of them is a big game. They’re all urgent. They’re all important. You don’t get any of them back.”

Belichick and his assistants make a point of knowing every starter, every backup, and every special teams player on the rival roster. “We have an individual scouting report on each player that plays on every one of those teams,” the coach said. “What their tendencies are, what their strengths are, what we think their weaknesses are, and how to play them.”

Belichick and his staff catalogue several thousand plays that opponents have used in recent seasons even though they know that they probably won’t see more than 70. “We don’t just want to say, ‘Well, that’s not going to come up,’” he said. “I think that would be irresponsible.”

In a league that, from drafting to scheduling, has been designed to produce parity, preparation is paramount. “Every week you’re up against a team that has the same opportunity as you do, the same salary cap, same draft choices,” said Belichick. “Every week it’s a huge challenge to be able to compete against that team. That’s what it’s about for me.”

IDENTIFYING WELL-COACHED TEAMS

“The adjustments that they make. How well their players, as a group, play fundamentally. How well they handle situations—down and distance, time, things like that. It’s not so much about the play. A lot of that is just having the right distribution, doing the right thing, and doing the right thing in a situation when the quarter­back scrambles, when stuff happens—screen passes, misdirection, deceptive plays, things like that. How the defense plays them. How well the offense executes them. How often they have obvious miscommunications where something is wrong. You don’t know exactly what it is, but you know something is fouled up, versus the defense gives the offense a bunch of different looks, different situations, and they can handle it. Obviously they’re doing a lot of things right.”

DIVISIONAL INTENSITY

“We don’t have a 162-game schedule. We play 16 games. Every one of them is a big game. They’re all urgent. They’re all important. You don’t get any of them back. You only get 16 chances in the regular season. For us, every game is a big game. Obviously, division games are a little bit bigger because of the importance of the standings and what they mean to the division, but every game is a big game. Last week was a big game. Next week will be a big game. They’re all huge. Division rivals, those games are intense. Both teams know each other well. They know their schemes. They know the players. They’ve really played against each other so there is a high level of competitiveness there.

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