Responsible for 17 AFC East championships, nine Super Bowl appearances, and six Lombardi trophies, the New England Patriots’ dynasty is destined to be remembered as one of the greatest bastions in the history of organized sports. While both Bill Belichick and Tom Brady are regarded as the best to ever hold their respective job titles, their working relationship wasn’t always glamorous.
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In fact, it often required a fair bit of yelling and hammering. During a recent appearance on the Pivot Podcast, the future hall-of-fame head coach noted that, for all of the success that Brady brought to the Patriots, he made sure to never give his quarterback any kind of preferred treatment. According to Belichick, it was crucial to the overall success of the team.
“I think it’s really important because, and Tom knew it and he brought it to my attention, it enabled him to get more leadership to the offense. If I don’t point him out, then everybody walks out there feeling like they got yelled at except for him. But, when I could make points to Tom, then Tom could say ‘Hey fellas, look, he got after me too. He got after all of us. We gotta get it going,” he said.
While the move itself certainly helped to improve Brady’s ability to build camaraderie with his teammates, it’s anything but original. The coaching tactic of making an example out of your best player is well documented, however, Belichick learned it from a rather interesting source.
In keeping with the theme that greatness is something that permeates throughout the cosmos, the most decorated coach in NFL history admitted to stealing the trick from the legendary Bob Knight, former head coach of the basketball icon, Michael Jordan.
“I learned that from Coach Knight. Coach Knight did that with Jordan in the Olympics. He told Jordan, ‘I’m going to be on you and I’m going to be on you hard, especially on defense, because I know you can take it.’ Jordan says ‘Bring it on, I just want everybody else to play better. Bring it on.’ Cause if you’re yelling at Michael Jordan, everybody else has gotta calm down.”
Considering that Brady and Belichick are now regarded as the gridiron equivalents to Knight and Jordan, the idea that one directly influenced the other certainly seems poetic. Nevertheless, having to coach the face of your sport is as much of a blessing as it is a burden.
Bill Belichick on the challenges of coaching a star player
In the midst of Belichick’s new book, The Art of Winning: Lessons from a Life in Football, the newfound head coach of the North Carolina Tar Heels noted the unique challenges that come with coaching a star player. While he insists that those challenges are “good” to have, they can also lead to some rather questionable situations.
For Belichick, the best example of that can be found in the story regarding Antonio Brown’s attempt to give Brady a four-figure order of milk.
“Antonio ordered milk. He ordered this special milk for Brady. It costs $5,000… It kind of got mixed up and it ended up in the mail room for too long and the milk went bad… So we go out and get $5,000 worth of special milk and give it to Brady from Antonio. We had to turn in an expense report for $5,000 worth of milk. Sometimes you’ve just got to do the right thing, and you don’t want to ruin the relationship between Brown and Brady over spoiled milk.”
The story stands as a testament to the lengths that Belichick was willing to go to just to ensure that everyone was on the same page in New England. While those glory days are now well behind him, much like the milk, the veteran play caller sees no reason in crying over it.
Belichick will continue to promote his book throughout the next several weeks before turning his attention towards the upcoming 2025 FBS season, where he’ll hope to bring some much-needed pride to a destitute ACC program.
