Bill Belichick won six Super Bowls as the head coach of the New England Patriots — more than any other head coach for any other NFL franchise. Of course, he had a lot of help from a guy named Tom Brady — but Belichick deserves plenty of credit too.
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Credit, not just for his brilliant defensive schemes, although they were great. It was also the 73-year-old’s tough, detail-oriented approach to preparation that made his Patriots so consistently strong.
Belichick made his name in the regular season and postseason, but he didn’t limit his focus to game days. His success started with his approach to the offseason. Players spent much of the time between the Super Bowl in early February and the start of training camp in late July left to their own devices.
However, parts of the offseason are dedicated to mandatory team activities, like the minicamps NFL teams are reporting to this week.
The legendary Belichick ‘speech’
There’s a 4–6 week gap between the end of minicamp and the start of training camp, however. And that’s why, according to Devin McCourty, Belichick gave the same, quintessentially Belichick speech to wrap up minicamp “every single year.”
“We’d get our 45 to an hour Bill Belichick kind of message before you left for the break… It started off with, ‘You’ve already built a routine going into our month or month and a half break,'” McCourty detailed.
“Let’s not change our routine, let’s not start working out at 8 pm or waiting until 5 pm when you guys are done with work, and they’re calling you and you’re grabbing a drink and you’re not working out. Let’s stay in a routine, we’ve built a routine for the summer, let’s stay at it.”
As someone who spent his entire 13-year career playing under Belichick from 2010 to 2022, McCourty is uniquely qualified to relay the speech he heard a baker’s dozen times. A three-time Second-Team All-Pro and three-time Super Bowl champ under Belichick, he knows firsthand how this works.
The famous ‘trifecta’
Belichick was characteristically savage during these end-of-minicamp speeches. He’d even bring up specific headlines of players getting into trouble with DUIs or disorderly conduct — whether from one or even several years prior. But he always ended with “the famous trifecta.”
“And he would hit the famous trifecta. If you played in New England, you’ve heard of the trifecta, of what you wanted to avoid during any offseason break. Whether it was in the winter, whether it was in the summer. Trifecta was whenever you’re in a situation, and it had three things, you know trouble could be ahead. If it had a-holes, women, and alcohol, you know those are the three things. When you put them all in one room, it was time to avoid.”
As McCourty pointed out, Belichick dealt with some real characters in that locker room, including Rob Gronkowski, Julian Edelman, and Dont’a Hightower. He was able to manage all of those eccentric personalities and mold them into champions.
While he might need to use a lighter touch with the college kids he’s now leading at Chapel Hill as the head football coach at the University of North Carolina, his messages should still resonate with college football stars in the offseason.
