Post by aceback76 on Jun 5, 2017 12:02:59 GMT -6
For Patriots' Coach, War Is Decided Before Game
By DAMON HACK FEB. 3, 2005
JACKSONVILLE, Fla., Feb. 2 - Bill Belichick says football games are won before players ever take the field. An opponent's weakness should be exploited. Preparation can make victory a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Those statements are nods to Sun Tzu's military treatise, "The Art of War," a book that shapes Belichick's coaching philosophy, and to the influence a head coach can wield in the National Football League.
Delivering that message in his deep monotone, Belichick has formed the bedrock of a New England Patriots team that will try to win its third Super Bowl title in four seasons when it meets the Philadelphia Eagles on Sunday here at Alltel Stadium.
If the Patriots defeat the Eagles, Belichick would cement a legacy rivaling many of the league's greatest coaches. In a sport where most secrets die under the glare of game film, the 52-year-old Belichick stands apart from his peers, defying the league's economic design for parity.
He has become a master of deception by identifying players smart enough and physically gifted enough to play several positions. He then uses them in innovative ways. During the American Football Conference championship game against the Indianapolis Colts last season, Belichick kept switching cornerback Ty Law and safety Rodney Harrison, confusing quarterback Peyton Manning and baiting him into four interceptions.
Belichick stretched the conventions of the game further this season. Way back in training camp last summer, he was already worrying about possible backups for the Patriots' defensive secondary, just in case problems arose during the season. Knowing that wide receiver Troy Brown had played a little cornerback in college, Belichick began trying him out on defense, a highly unusual approach in today's ultra-specialized N.F.L. But the move looked prescient when two key defensive backs were lost to injuries, and Brown was ready to step in, even contributing three interceptions, the second-highest total on the team.
Ernie Accorsi, the Giants' general manager, said of Belichick's myriad schemes, "You can't nail him down."
Around the N.F.L., people are listening to Belichick, a disciplined leader in rumpled sweatsuits.
"When Kennedy was running for president and you heard him speak for the first time, you thought, 'This guy has been preparing to be president his whole life,"' said Accorsi, who was Belichick's boss with the Cleveland Browns in the early 1990's. "When I sat down with Bill for the first time and he started speaking, you just had the feeling that he had been preparing to be a head coach his whole life.
"I think he clearly is the best coach in the N.F.L. Everything he does as a coach has been planned for. He is at the head of the class and he's young enough that I don't know where it's going to stop."
Belichick's players refer to him as the smartest coach in the league, citing his unquenchable thirst to read, learn and teach. He graduated from Wesleyan University in Middletown, Conn., where he studied economics and played football, lacrosse and squash.
A victory Sunday would give him 10 victories in 11 postseason games as a head coach, elevating him above the 9-1 playoff record he now shares with Vince Lombardi, the Green Bay Packers' taskmaster who won five N.F.L. championships in seven seasons during the 1960's.
Belichick's run has drawn comparisons to Chuck Noll, who won four Super Bowl championships in six seasons with the Pittsburgh Steelers, Bill Walsh, who won three titles during the 1980's as coach of the San Francisco 49ers, and others in different eras.
But Belichick's accomplishments have come during the salary-cap era, when each of the league's 32 teams has had the same spending limit on players. That puts New England on an unusual level, said Jimmy Johnson, who coached the Dallas Cowboys to Super Bowl titles during the 1992 and 1993 seasons, part of a run of three titles in four seasons.
"It may be the finest coaching job in the history of the N.F.L.," Johnson said of Belichick.
Johnson said the role of a coach is even more critical today than before free agency and the salary cap, which began in 1994, because players switch teams every year and coaches are forced to field inexpensive rookies to stay under the cap.
"Belichick and I talked about it the other day," Johnson said. "You can't compare the post-salary-cap era to the Steelers, the 49ers and the Cowboys. Back in those days, you had players for six, seven years. You didn't have to cut veterans who made a lot of money. You had fewer mistakes.
"For them," Johnson said of the Patriots, "dealing with new players every year -- every week -- and to still be of this quality says a lot."
Noll's teams boasted a roster of future Hall of Fame players that carried the Steelers through most of the 1970's.
"It's even tougher now to put a string together and keep it together," Noll said in a telephone interview. "It's tougher to win the second time and then the third time and then the fourth time. You have to have special people around you that believe in what they're doing and that want to do it."
Belichick's team exudes an everyman quality. When players are injured, Belichick has been able to replace them, bringing the new ones up to speed and continuing to win.
In New England's 20-3 victory over the Indianapolis Colts in a playoff game on Jan. 16, the Patriots' secondary, which was missing its two starting cornerbacks, held Manning, the league's most valuable player, without a touchdown pass for the first time this season.
Belichick and the rest of his coaching staff seemed to know where Manning wanted to throw even before he planted his feet.
"He creates anxiety in opposing players, like he did with Peyton," said Carl Banks, a retired linebacker who played for Belichick when he was the Giants' defensive coordinator and coach of the Browns.
Banks said that Manning "wanted to go downfield" with his throws, but Belichick blanketed the passing lanes with defenders.
Belichick gives credits for some of his football acumen to his immersion in the game at an early age. His father, Steve, was hired as a scout and assistant coach at Navy in 1956. Belichick grew up dissecting plays at his father's knee.
Belichick later studied the innovations of Paul Brown, one of the first coaches to bring a cerebral mien to professional football as the coach of the Cleveland Browns in the 1950's.
"So many of the things that we do today and that I did when I was at Cleveland were the same things that Paul Brown did," Belichick said. "The same schedule, the same philosophy, the same approach to getting your team to perform to the highest level on the practice field, in meetings, in strategy, in game situations."
The mental preparation seen in Belichick's teams was evident in those of other Brown disciples like Walsh and Noll.
"One thing I learned was to never beat the heck out of your football team in practice," said Noll, who played for Brown for seven years on the Cleveland Browns. "He used to say, 'A lot of coaches leave their game on the practice field.' He wanted a lot of the preparation to be mental, and I think it carried over to the games."
Willie McGinest, a Patriots linebacker, said Belichick surrounds himself with players whose intellect is equal to their athleticism. Many of New England's linebackers, like McGinest, were defensive linemen in college. They are large enough stop the run and agile enough to drop back into pass coverage -- whatever a scheme calls for.
"You have to be smart and you have to study," McGinest said. "This organization throws a lot of things at you, because they like to change schemes week in and week out. You have to learn on the fly. Our game plans relate to what we want to do and what we want to stop you from doing."
Belichick, who was fired in Cleveland after a 5-11 season in 1995, has had nearly a decade to reflect on the mistakes of his five-year tenure there. He admits that he failed to delegate authority, another way of saying he did not trust his coaching staff or veteran players to take on leadership roles.
His style, Belichick said, has changed.
"I'm kind of a detail-oriented person and, sometimes, that's not good," he said. "Sometimes, it's better to let other people worry about things and let the head coach be the head coach."
With two Super Bowl titles, Belichick has as many as Bill Parcells, his former mentor with the Giants and Jets and now a rival of sorts with the Cowboys. (Belichick won his pair without Parcells, while Parcells's two championships came with Belichick as his assistant.)
Charley Casserly, the Houston Texans' general manager who was a Washington Redskins executive while Joe Gibbs coached the team to three Super Bowl titles, said that Belichick belongs on a list of great coaches for his ability to exploit matchups, a skill that can benefit a team long before a game begins.
Once on the field, the action appears preordained, as it did against the Colts and, one week later, against the Pittsburgh Steelers in the A.F.C. championship game at Heinz Field.
With the Steelers facing a fourth-and-one in the first quarter, Belichick called Patriots linebacker Ted Johnson to the sideline, anticipating what play Pittsburgh might run.
Johnson relayed the message to his teammates, who then corralled Pittsburgh's bulky running back, Jerome Bettis, short of a first down and stripped the ball from him. On the next play, New England scored on a 60-yard touchdown pass.
"He gave me a tip and I relayed it to the guys who needed to know," Johnson said. "He obviously knew something I didn't. I think it was more of a gut call on his part."
In many ways, it spoke to Belichick's core philosophy, one revealed in the legacy of N.F.L. coaches and in the pages of Sun Tzu's military strategy.
"One thing he said was that every battle is won before it is fought," Belichick said. "I'm just glad I'm not fighting him."
**************************************************************************************
There is now a BOOK out on Amazon on how to use Sun Tzu's principles in "Team Coaching":
The Art of Team Coaching: How Sun Tzu would Coach Coaches Paperback – October 28, 2013
by Allan P. Sand (Author
By DAMON HACK FEB. 3, 2005
JACKSONVILLE, Fla., Feb. 2 - Bill Belichick says football games are won before players ever take the field. An opponent's weakness should be exploited. Preparation can make victory a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Those statements are nods to Sun Tzu's military treatise, "The Art of War," a book that shapes Belichick's coaching philosophy, and to the influence a head coach can wield in the National Football League.
Delivering that message in his deep monotone, Belichick has formed the bedrock of a New England Patriots team that will try to win its third Super Bowl title in four seasons when it meets the Philadelphia Eagles on Sunday here at Alltel Stadium.
If the Patriots defeat the Eagles, Belichick would cement a legacy rivaling many of the league's greatest coaches. In a sport where most secrets die under the glare of game film, the 52-year-old Belichick stands apart from his peers, defying the league's economic design for parity.
He has become a master of deception by identifying players smart enough and physically gifted enough to play several positions. He then uses them in innovative ways. During the American Football Conference championship game against the Indianapolis Colts last season, Belichick kept switching cornerback Ty Law and safety Rodney Harrison, confusing quarterback Peyton Manning and baiting him into four interceptions.
Belichick stretched the conventions of the game further this season. Way back in training camp last summer, he was already worrying about possible backups for the Patriots' defensive secondary, just in case problems arose during the season. Knowing that wide receiver Troy Brown had played a little cornerback in college, Belichick began trying him out on defense, a highly unusual approach in today's ultra-specialized N.F.L. But the move looked prescient when two key defensive backs were lost to injuries, and Brown was ready to step in, even contributing three interceptions, the second-highest total on the team.
Ernie Accorsi, the Giants' general manager, said of Belichick's myriad schemes, "You can't nail him down."
Around the N.F.L., people are listening to Belichick, a disciplined leader in rumpled sweatsuits.
"When Kennedy was running for president and you heard him speak for the first time, you thought, 'This guy has been preparing to be president his whole life,"' said Accorsi, who was Belichick's boss with the Cleveland Browns in the early 1990's. "When I sat down with Bill for the first time and he started speaking, you just had the feeling that he had been preparing to be a head coach his whole life.
"I think he clearly is the best coach in the N.F.L. Everything he does as a coach has been planned for. He is at the head of the class and he's young enough that I don't know where it's going to stop."
Belichick's players refer to him as the smartest coach in the league, citing his unquenchable thirst to read, learn and teach. He graduated from Wesleyan University in Middletown, Conn., where he studied economics and played football, lacrosse and squash.
A victory Sunday would give him 10 victories in 11 postseason games as a head coach, elevating him above the 9-1 playoff record he now shares with Vince Lombardi, the Green Bay Packers' taskmaster who won five N.F.L. championships in seven seasons during the 1960's.
Belichick's run has drawn comparisons to Chuck Noll, who won four Super Bowl championships in six seasons with the Pittsburgh Steelers, Bill Walsh, who won three titles during the 1980's as coach of the San Francisco 49ers, and others in different eras.
But Belichick's accomplishments have come during the salary-cap era, when each of the league's 32 teams has had the same spending limit on players. That puts New England on an unusual level, said Jimmy Johnson, who coached the Dallas Cowboys to Super Bowl titles during the 1992 and 1993 seasons, part of a run of three titles in four seasons.
"It may be the finest coaching job in the history of the N.F.L.," Johnson said of Belichick.
Johnson said the role of a coach is even more critical today than before free agency and the salary cap, which began in 1994, because players switch teams every year and coaches are forced to field inexpensive rookies to stay under the cap.
"Belichick and I talked about it the other day," Johnson said. "You can't compare the post-salary-cap era to the Steelers, the 49ers and the Cowboys. Back in those days, you had players for six, seven years. You didn't have to cut veterans who made a lot of money. You had fewer mistakes.
"For them," Johnson said of the Patriots, "dealing with new players every year -- every week -- and to still be of this quality says a lot."
Noll's teams boasted a roster of future Hall of Fame players that carried the Steelers through most of the 1970's.
"It's even tougher now to put a string together and keep it together," Noll said in a telephone interview. "It's tougher to win the second time and then the third time and then the fourth time. You have to have special people around you that believe in what they're doing and that want to do it."
Belichick's team exudes an everyman quality. When players are injured, Belichick has been able to replace them, bringing the new ones up to speed and continuing to win.
In New England's 20-3 victory over the Indianapolis Colts in a playoff game on Jan. 16, the Patriots' secondary, which was missing its two starting cornerbacks, held Manning, the league's most valuable player, without a touchdown pass for the first time this season.
Belichick and the rest of his coaching staff seemed to know where Manning wanted to throw even before he planted his feet.
"He creates anxiety in opposing players, like he did with Peyton," said Carl Banks, a retired linebacker who played for Belichick when he was the Giants' defensive coordinator and coach of the Browns.
Banks said that Manning "wanted to go downfield" with his throws, but Belichick blanketed the passing lanes with defenders.
Belichick gives credits for some of his football acumen to his immersion in the game at an early age. His father, Steve, was hired as a scout and assistant coach at Navy in 1956. Belichick grew up dissecting plays at his father's knee.
Belichick later studied the innovations of Paul Brown, one of the first coaches to bring a cerebral mien to professional football as the coach of the Cleveland Browns in the 1950's.
"So many of the things that we do today and that I did when I was at Cleveland were the same things that Paul Brown did," Belichick said. "The same schedule, the same philosophy, the same approach to getting your team to perform to the highest level on the practice field, in meetings, in strategy, in game situations."
The mental preparation seen in Belichick's teams was evident in those of other Brown disciples like Walsh and Noll.
"One thing I learned was to never beat the heck out of your football team in practice," said Noll, who played for Brown for seven years on the Cleveland Browns. "He used to say, 'A lot of coaches leave their game on the practice field.' He wanted a lot of the preparation to be mental, and I think it carried over to the games."
Willie McGinest, a Patriots linebacker, said Belichick surrounds himself with players whose intellect is equal to their athleticism. Many of New England's linebackers, like McGinest, were defensive linemen in college. They are large enough stop the run and agile enough to drop back into pass coverage -- whatever a scheme calls for.
"You have to be smart and you have to study," McGinest said. "This organization throws a lot of things at you, because they like to change schemes week in and week out. You have to learn on the fly. Our game plans relate to what we want to do and what we want to stop you from doing."
Belichick, who was fired in Cleveland after a 5-11 season in 1995, has had nearly a decade to reflect on the mistakes of his five-year tenure there. He admits that he failed to delegate authority, another way of saying he did not trust his coaching staff or veteran players to take on leadership roles.
His style, Belichick said, has changed.
"I'm kind of a detail-oriented person and, sometimes, that's not good," he said. "Sometimes, it's better to let other people worry about things and let the head coach be the head coach."
With two Super Bowl titles, Belichick has as many as Bill Parcells, his former mentor with the Giants and Jets and now a rival of sorts with the Cowboys. (Belichick won his pair without Parcells, while Parcells's two championships came with Belichick as his assistant.)
Charley Casserly, the Houston Texans' general manager who was a Washington Redskins executive while Joe Gibbs coached the team to three Super Bowl titles, said that Belichick belongs on a list of great coaches for his ability to exploit matchups, a skill that can benefit a team long before a game begins.
Once on the field, the action appears preordained, as it did against the Colts and, one week later, against the Pittsburgh Steelers in the A.F.C. championship game at Heinz Field.
With the Steelers facing a fourth-and-one in the first quarter, Belichick called Patriots linebacker Ted Johnson to the sideline, anticipating what play Pittsburgh might run.
Johnson relayed the message to his teammates, who then corralled Pittsburgh's bulky running back, Jerome Bettis, short of a first down and stripped the ball from him. On the next play, New England scored on a 60-yard touchdown pass.
"He gave me a tip and I relayed it to the guys who needed to know," Johnson said. "He obviously knew something I didn't. I think it was more of a gut call on his part."
In many ways, it spoke to Belichick's core philosophy, one revealed in the legacy of N.F.L. coaches and in the pages of Sun Tzu's military strategy.
"One thing he said was that every battle is won before it is fought," Belichick said. "I'm just glad I'm not fighting him."
**************************************************************************************
There is now a BOOK out on Amazon on how to use Sun Tzu's principles in "Team Coaching":
The Art of Team Coaching: How Sun Tzu would Coach Coaches Paperback – October 28, 2013
by Allan P. Sand (Author