Bill Belichick on a life in football

Bill Belichick, the now-73-year-old former NFL coach, wasn’t interested in gloating about his many achievements when he wrote his new book, “The Art of Winning” (to be published May 6), He says the title was the choice of the publisher and advisors on the book. “My title choice would have been, ‘How I Did My Job,’ or ‘Lessons From My Life In Football,'” he said.

The result is not a tell-all, but what you might call a tell-some. He writes, among other topics, that he’s not a fan of the inspirational locker room speech at halftime. “Coach, have you not seen the movies?” I asked.

“I’ve seen ’em!” Belichick replied. “Yeah, I would say I’m not against them. I would just say, I’ve seen very few that were really worthy of a strong mention, or changed the direction of the team or the game. There’ve been very few. Most of it really is strategic: What are they doing? What do we need to adjust to that? That’s really what football is: identifying a problem, figuring a solution, and then executing that plan to make it work.”

As he writes, he’s motivated not by style or fame, but by the obvious. “I try to capture some of the ups and downs and the preparation and the dealing with star players and the big moments,” he said.

“You wanted to give back to football, you write, some of what football has given to you?” I asked.

“Absolutely.”

You’re probably thinking the same thing I was when I sat down with Belichick: What’s going on with his sweatshirt? “Well, you could see I’ve worn this one for a while,” he laughed.

Tattered and often sleeveless, Belichick’s signature look is part of his singular focus. 

Football has given him a lot over a 50-year career … second all-time in NFL victories, including a record six Super Bowl titles as head coach of the New England Patriots.

Asked what a championship victory is like, Belichick replied, “It feels like a lifetime achievement. It feels like you’ve worked your whole life to get to that point, and honestly when you win one, you try to savor the moment because in the back of your mind you’re kind of thinking, ‘I don’t know if I’ll ever be here again.'”

Like father, like son

Football is everything for Belichick. His father, Steve, a beloved assistant at Navy for more than three decades, made sure of that. “As an only child, you know, I followed my dad around,” he said. “If he had been a fireman, I probably would have been a fireman. He was a football coach, and so I hung around him, and I did whatever he did.”

I asked, “But what did you love about that? Because plenty of sons run in the other direction.”

“Well, I think a big part of it was the respect and adoration that they had for him; it seemed very rewarding.”

When young Billy went looking for a coaching job of his own, though, Dad had some advice: “You’re never gonna make any money coaching. You need to go to business school, you need to get a job.”

“He discouraged you?” I asked.

“He was being real,” Belichick replied.

But the National Football League soon realized that there was something special about this coach’s kid, and by the year 2000, Patriots owner Robert Kraft hired Belichick to turn the team into a dynasty … which he did, finding perhaps the best quarterback of all time with the 199th pick of the 2000 draft.   

I asked, “What did you see in Tom Brady that everybody else missed? He wasn’t the fastest, he wasn’t the strongest, he didn’t blow you away with his athleticism.”

“Well, two things really; he was accurate, and he was a very good decision-maker,” Belichick said. Plus, “He got better every single day.”

“As he got better, you got better. Did you build off of each other?”

“Absolutely, yeah.”

“You just gotta turn the page”  

One area where they are clearly different is with the media. Brady seems at ease in the spotlight; Belichick does not. “Well, I understand they have a tough job,” he said. “On the other side of that, as a coach, you know, you have a job to do, too. There are times where I could have been more accommodating, I admit that. You just gotta turn the page and move forward. As much as they want to dig deeper and deeper into the grave and see what more is down there, at some point you’ve just got to look ahead and move on.”

It’s also been a momentous year for Belichick. He was named head coach of the University of North Carolina, the result of a messy split from Robert Kraft and the Patriots in 2024.

Despite their 24 years together with the Patriots, Kraft is not mentioned in Belichick’s book. “He’s not. Well again, it’s about my life lessons in football, and it’s really more about the ones that I experienced directly.”

“He’s not even in the acknowledgment section?”

“Correct.”

“Do you feel like you were treated with dignity and respect when you were let go by Robert Kraft?”

“Yeah, well, it was a mutual decision for us to part ways,” Belichick said.

“He said ‘fired.'”

“It was a mutual decision.”

The “creative muse”

The other change for Belichick is 24-year-old Jordon Hudson, his “creative muse,” as he writes in his book. Jordan was a constant presence during our interview.

I asked, “You have Jordan right over there. Everybody in the world seems to be following this relationship. They’ve got an opinion about your private life. It’s got nothing to do with them, but they’re invested in it. How do you deal with that?”

“I’ve never been too worried about what everybody else thinks,” Belichick replied. “Just try to do what I feel like is best for me and what’s right.”

When Belichick was asked how the two of them met, Hudson spoke up: “He’s not talking about this.”

It’s a topic neither one of them is comfortable commenting on, though Hudson has recently posted about it on Instagram, including a picture of Belichick as a fisherman and Hudson as a mermaid. In another, Belichick is balancing Jordan on his feet. “Yeah, so I’m on some of those social media platforms, but I honestly don’t follow,” he said.

What he does follow isn’t clicks or views, but touchdowns and (above all) wins.

I asked, “You do seem like you’re having a lot more fun these days than you were in other chapters of your life.”

“I enjoy football,” Belichick replied. “I enjoy the whole process of it. It’s hard to win, and it’s hard to beat other good coaches, good teams. I appreciate the grind. I appreciate the competition. But coaching’s fun, and honestly, I feel like I haven’t worked a day in my life.”

      
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Story produced by Gabriel Falcon. Editor: Ed Givnish.

     
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