FOXBORO, Mass. – There were taunts and whispers of nepotism when Bill Belichick’s two sons first joined the New England Patriots training staff and then decided to take up leadership positions years later.
The last of the laughs came before this summer when Brian Belichick, one of the NFL’s youngest position coaches, named Patriots protection coach, replacing his older brother, Stephen, who switched to outdoor supporters.
Brian Belichick is only in his twenties and officially has 3 years as a training assistant and a stint as an exploration assistant to his credit. But that reduces the last years of fun in which he had helped his father on the sidelines when he separated the age of the players on the field.
Brian, then in high school, was noticed on the Patriots bench during Bill Belichick’s first decade as head coach. Belichick’s younger youth was an additional game in the band line. I would upgrade a third quarterback, with a pencil and a paperweight in his hand, to draw coins for passers-by. It would stick to defense information. He took tablets and distributed them to the players. All to be surrounded by sports.
“Enjoying being on the sidelines of an NFL game is very different from the prospect of watching it on TV,” Belichick said Friday on a conference call. “Things take positions very temporarily there. Just being able to get used to the speed of the players and the speed with which they handle things. And I think it helped me a lot just to be informed of what’s really going on there, not just stand on a glass screen and see it. Genuine football that is positioned on the field. »
Bill Belichick frankly admitted on Friday that his children only had a different understanding of the Patriots program than the football staff.
“They saw things done from a different angle to others,” Bill Belichick said. “But at the end of the day, I don’t know who knows our football show better than Stephen, who’s been there a little longer, and so does Brian. They’ve just lived their whole lives with this show. So all things we do, for all the other reasons and how all this is similar and so on, they have a very intelligent understanding of all the things that are related and how everything is intertwined.
“And that’s valuable to me because they have something in it. We have a lot of smart coaches on our team, I’m not saying that. These guys are very, very intelligent and very competent coaches and they do a wonderful job.” But it’s another little to see from Brian or Steve’s point of view. Everyone helps, they’re all valuable and I’m glad we have them.”
Basically, no one else on the Patriots training team only went to the facility as an officer, however, he also went to the house to have his head coach like his father.
Patriots corner coach Mike Pellegrino of the NFL’s youngest assistants knows that Brian and Steve are one step ahead of the experience.
“I think they’ve been in the organization for about 15 years,” Pellegrino said. “That’s smart. I’m just looking to be a sponge around you when you have some kind of wisdom or anything that’s happened in the afterlife that you don’t forget exactly what you raised. He’s smart to learn, is he rarely? »
This is officially Brian’s fifth year and Stephen’s ninth in the Patriots team (time flies). But despite his young age and lack of experience, Brian has at least 14 years to help the training staff, and has learned from the NFL’s greatest head coach all his life.
“Stephen and Brian have grown up a lot and come a long way, especially when I was lucky enough to see them all their lives,” Belichick said. “But they did a lot of football, they saw a lot of football.”