There's a well-known video clip of a post-game press conference where Bill Belichick holds forth for ten minutes on the forty-year history of the long snapper in football. In football circles, this video is shocking, because of the stark contrast from the famous grunts, stares and derisive silence with which he typically responds to questions.
The way Belichick handled the media as an NFL coach was flawless, a beautiful thing to behold. He made sure to reveal nothing to the competition, and he never allowed himself to be baited into anything, ever. But every once in a while he'd surprise everyone by holding forth on some abstruse sub-domain of football, astounding everyone with the encyclopedic depth of his knowledge.
Reading this book is like hearing Belichick answer the long snapper question. It's blunt, it's insightful, it's candid (with one glaring exception), and it's more interesting than you'd expect.
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Unsurprisingly, Belichick's writing style matches his public persona. What he says is what he says. It's refreshing, and it makes the reader's job easier. And every so often he surprises the reader with some genuine mirth. See Chapter 1 for example, for a story about Patriots kicker Adam Vinatieri and a minor accommodation the team made for him the night before the Super Bowl. In one of the great understatements in the history of sports, Belichick deadpans: "He rewarded us the next day by kicking a fairly significant field goal." (Vinatieri kicked the game-winner to give the Patriots their first Super Bowl win ever.)
I mentioned two paragraphs ago one glaring exception to this book's candor. There is no mention whatsoever of Patriots owner Robert Kraft. But there is an oblique comment late in the book where Belichick writes, cryptically: "putting the priorities of the football team ahead of ownership goals ultimately led to a fractured relationship in Foxborough." Something happened there that led to Belichick's dismissal, nobody knows exactly what it was, and the reader can feel the Belichick irritation dripping from this rather un-Belichick-like sentence.
I have to be honest, I love Belichick's personality. Nobody owns him. He prizes credibility, he takes ownership of his situation, he outworks everybody. He controls what's in his circle of control. And if something changes that makes his situation untenable (like what happened with Patriots ownership at the end of his time there), he leaves. No drama, no whining. And then he'll find another situation where he can take appropriate ownership of his circle of control.
Note: Shane Parrish of the Farham Street blog did a wide-ranging podcast with Bill Belichick recently, it was well worth listening to.
[Dear readers: what follows are my notes, quotes and reactions to the text. They are meant to help order my thinking and help me remember--and they are too long. It might be worth reading the bolded parts, but even then please remember that your time is valuable.]
Notes:
Introduction:
1ff "Titles do not mean as much as your performance on the job."
3 Citing strong competition as something that "forced me to improve"; on being born into football as the son of Steve Belichick who was assistant coach at the Naval Academy "and by all accounts, he was the best game scout anyone had ever seen." From him he learned how to break down film, learn tips that players can use during the game, and gain advantage by studying the opponent's tendencies. "I still use these techniques."
5 on being inspired to write this book by Ray Dalio; Belichick refers to Dalio's book Principles, calling it "incredibly useful." [It's worth thinking about how writing a book to explain your methods is a lot different from just using your methods without the explanatory system; also the best books tend to be written after a person's experience of a lifetime of applying the ideas in the book, to the point where he can narrate a fully coherent structure that can be given in a form that makes sense to people outside the discipline.]
6 On the four quadrants of employees, a concept from Jack Welch, ranging from "must keep them" to "get rid of them ASAP." The four quadrants are:
* productive with a great attitude
* productive with a bad attitude
* not productive with a good attitude
* not productive with a bad attitude
6ff Other insights from coach Larimore, his high school coach in multiple sports: you have to outwork your competition; everybody is replaceable; also don't beat yourself [I think here he's talking about avoid dumb mistakes, staying disciplined, avoiding unforced errors, etc.]
7 "And I don't have to worry about my words getting clipped into a sound bite or twisted out of context." [An underappreciated reason for writing a book.]
Chapter 1: Big Games, Big Moments
10 "You cannot think of big tests and triumphs as 'final' in any respect." On mastering a process and having dependability. [Scott Adams would agree, heartily, with the notion of installing and mastering a process.]
11 On managing the chaos that surrounds a big game, even though you treat the big game no differently from any other game because of your winning process; focusing on what you need to focus on, let your opponents get distracted.
13ff On "the drawer" concept, where you metaphorically put every non-essential task and commitment when you're focusing on the season or the job at hand or the game, and when the season is done, the job is over, then you can go back to "the drawer" and take care of whatever's in it. "The drawer is a tool for managing distractions."
14 "Really big moments are infrequent and nobody wants to look back with regret because they were distracted and didn't perform their best when it mattered most. You honor commitments by paying full attention to them, not by randomly swinging back and forth between what matters and what doesn't based on your mood or anxiety."
15 Some Belichick mirth here, talking about an accommodation the team made for Adam Vinatieri when his hotel room smelled disgustingly like smoke: they switched him to a non-smoking room. Belichick deadpans: "He rewarded us the next day by kicking a fairly significant field goal." [Football fans will know that this was the game-winning field goal in the 2000 Super Bowl.]
18ff On being the "show" in the sense that the team and the players are at the Super Bowl to work, they are not there as fans; you have the rest of your life to be a fan; also an anecdote on how one player broke a security rule and got sent home. [The player isn't named.]
20ff On introducing the team as a whole, breaking tradition at the Super Bowl which usually named each starting player.
23 "I hope by now it is clear what I mean when I say 'there's no such thing as the big game.'" "If you have a good process, the big games will take care of themselves."
Chapter 2: Motivation
29ff On fans romanticizing the idea of the inspiring locker room speech, "Everyone eats it up. I don't know why." On Belichick using opponents' disrespect as a motivator, like the Eagles mapping out a parade route in advance of the Super Bowl. Instead of a rousing halftime speech Belichick uses halftime to focus on problems and what needs to be fixed.
31ff On understanding your players; players who simply love the game (surprisingly many don't); players who are just really good at football; players who are selfish but you can figure out a way to align incentives so his self-interest is met by acting unselfishly.
35 "Football might be a game, but it has a way of clarifying some basic truths about the 'real world.'"
36ff On players' reputation as motivator, using honor; an interesting example here where the team asks players to share who they are playing for, like a family member who sacrificed for them, etc. "Over and over, I was blown away by the depth and emotion that many participants showed." On shame as a source of motivation: one of the Patriot's coaches really flipped the script during a players' weigh-in, saying "Bill, why don't we weigh the coaches?...We have the fastest coaching staff in the league."
40-1 On using collective punishment: he used to make players run laps when they committed penalties, but then stumbled upon the idea of making the entire offense (or defense) run. Then everyone was pissed at the player, not just the coach [and of course the mistakes likely dropped off considerably.]
42ff Belichick on his own motivation: "I am motivated primarily by three things. The first is that I've been to the top, and the top ... is very good." [More Belichick mirth here I guess] On wanting to be the best, never shutting it off, also on gamifying the process, making it fun; and also on Belichick's fear of failure.
44 On not waiting around expecting someone else to motivate you; loving what you do for work, etc.
Chapter 3: Firing and Hiring
49ff On Belichick's experience being lied to by Cleveland Browns owner Art Modell; on Belichick failing to see various nuances when firing beloved quarterback Bernie Kosar; also on being "Bad News Billy" at his first job at the Colts, delivering knocks on the door to "go see the coach" to players who were being cut.
55 On Bill Parcells' dictum of two reasons you are fired, "Either you aren't playing well or someone else is playing better." [And I thought Wall Street was bad...]
58ff On a bad firing Belichick once did; [note here that there is a continuity/editing error here as the story is told in a way that lacks full context: there's a reference to a party in Cape Cod but no context on how the player and team got there. It looks like a few paragraphs may have gotten dropped out of the text here.] Also citing Jack Welch on firing employees with "love and respect" [I'm not sure "Neutron Jack" is the best example to use here on firing employees with love and respect.]
60ff On player attributes, on growth and improvement of the team as well as being aware of possible decline from aging or injury too; on constant upgrading of positions.
62ff Interesting comments on the "whatever you need" types who approach you at a new job: Belichick warms readers to understand their motives and "be leery." "Remember that help offered only in public is help with an asterisk."
65 Good point here on staffers who get promoted being asked to play a large role in choosing their replacements, with the caveat that "the next guy better not break the chain" or you'll have your new responsibilities plus your old ones too. This is pretty wise politically: you then have everybody with an interest in that job being done well, even the person who just left it. On Brian Daboll replacing himself with Josh McDaniels, who replaced himself with Nick Caserio.
69-70 Hilarious frontispiece quote here, referring to Belichick's mistakes there: "Respect the people of Cleveland... Seriously, respect the people of Cleveland."
Chapter 4: Handling Success
71ff "One good outcome doesn't mean anything." On sustaining it, on long term success; on embracing "dissatisfaction."
73 Excellent, highly complimentary paragraph here: "This book is about sustained high performance and winning, so, naturally, it will feature a lot of stories about Tom Brady. He handled success by using it to fuel his desire for more, and the result was not a straight line but a vector that pointed upward until it ended past the point of all measurement. In the best way, he made a mockery of a league more or less built to give every team the same likelihood of winning."
75ff On guys like Brady and Mahomes who "come off in public as frustrated or even joyless" because "they don't wait for a real crisis to fix things... They proactively set out to prevent crises." On embracing dissatisfaction in pursuit of perfection.
80 Comments here on finding players with apparent discipline problems, like Cory Dillon or Bryan Cox but who in reality were super-competitive players on bad teams and deeply frustrated about it.
82 Another interesting anecdote about leaving his starters in for a whole preseason game because they weren't playing good focused football, risking injury, something literally unheard of in the NFL.
85 Comments here on Brady and Belichick not satisfied: "He was a sophomore in the bench during the 1997 Michigan championship season, while I coordinated the defense for the Giants during two Super Bowl wins, in 1987 and 1991. In the grand scheme of things, both of us could hold our heads high: we had played roles on winning teams. We both could have retired and cut some commercials for car dealerships and local chambers of commerce. Tom probably would have become the athletic director at Michigan, or a senator, and I'd have had a biweekly segment on WFAN to complain about the Knicks. But obviously that wasn't going to be enough. For either of us."
Chapter 5: Roster Construction
91 On balancing the overall team vision with the people carrying out that vision: "If you are a leader, you manage that balance by scouting and developing talent that matches the vision. If you are a member of the team, you must understand how you fit in, be honest about what your own strengths are, and find ways to make yourself invaluable to the overall vision."
91 Unfortunate mention here of Jim Collins' spurious book Good to Great and "getting the right people on the bus."
93ff On focusing on details; note also the footnote on page 93 on focusing on what a player can do, not what he can't, and matching him "with a system that enhances their ability to be productive." "We, as coaches, should try to keep a player out of a compromising situation."
95ff On "evaluating the evaluators" of talent; on yes, maybe and no players, but on not overlooking those maybe and no players who can be "in between" players who can work on the practice squad until they grow into a team role; Belichick will say "prove it" to the player. Also on looking for players that play positions that will barely exist, like the fullback [this is the football version of staying ahead of your industry's trends].
98 On Brady's decisionmaking skill, "To me, that was the greatest of all his great strengths."
98 Also on Julian Edelman doing his tennis ball drill at 6am; "No Days Off"; on his determination to learn, etc.
99 On Belichick's six categories of player analysis:
Behavioral character: how important is football to him, what kind of teammate will he be, is he respected by coaches, etc
Athletic ability: talent vs. functional talent [physical standards like speed and strength vs. other factors that make him great at his position]
Strength and explosion: weight room warriors vs. strength on the field
Competitiveness: if choosing between players of similar ability, choose the more competitive one
Toughness: mental toughness as well as physical toughness
Learning: here the metric is football intelligence, FBI. "I have coached players with a first-grade reading level who could come off a field and rattle off a dozen things that just took place with mind-blowing insights." Your smartest prospect "may be your most frustrating." Also is the player an "error repeater"?
104 Interesting comment mentioning Tom Brady in a blurb about "players who I really wanted on the team but financially could not keep." Perhaps he is referring to Brady's last year or so in New England.
Chapter 6: Star Players
109ff On elite performers and how to handle them; on talent needing discipline; how genuinely elite players raise the level of their teammates, showing them a higher possible standard.
113ff On poorly managed elite players; on Antonio Brown [although Belichick offers readers no real details on this controversial player who only lasted 13 days with the team].
118ff On Drew Bledsoe and his decline; Belichick thought his perception time was slipping; then he was injured in the second game of the 2001 season, Tom Brady took over and the team was winning, and when Bledsoe came back from his injury Belichick stayed with Brady as QB. ".. every leader will have to make a critical and controversial decision."
Chapter 7: Preparation
125ff "The price of success is paid in advance." Comments here on performative preparation as opposed to real work. On the simple task of doing whatever you are asked and doing it as well as you can so that others can do their jobs thanks to your preparation work.
127 On football practice: repetition, attention to detail, being comfortable being uncomfortable; on making the practice situation worse than the game situations, like giving the scout team's lineman paddleball rackets to hold up in the QB's face, or spraying the ball with soapy water, or making the receivers wear boxing gloves so they couldn't grab the opposing players' jerseys, etc. [UConn's women's basketball team was also famous for making practice way worse than any game they might play.]
130 Complimenting Tom Brady and Carl Banks as players who forced Belichick to prepare more than normal "because I didn't want to be embarrassed by the fact that he studied our opponent's defense more than I did."
133 On "preparing against the well-prepared": when you're up against other teams who prepare well you need to mix things up, give false signals, etc. [Good use of game theory here!]
137 Belichick cites here Giannis Antetokounmpo's famous answer to a question at the end of a playoffs defeat, where a reporter asked him whether the season was a failure: "Do you get a promotion every year at your job? No, right? So every year, your work is a failure? No. Every year, you work towards something, which is a goal..." [This is an extremely insightful answer from Giannis, you want to think of your career as "working towards something," taking steps forward, rather than using a binary failure vs. victory paradigm.]
138-9 "A setback is like seeing a brand-new horizon of work that you failed to comprehend could have existed. Now it's time to get there, faster."
Chapter 8: Improvement
145ff "...imagine improvement as the medium through which your work should flow. Am I working towards something? Or am I just working?"
146ff On the "On to Cincinnati" press conference: "my job was not to help the media put together another article on our dysfunction. My job, as I saw it, was to speak to my team. And my message was laser focused on improvement." [Re Belichick's media presence, it's always been interesting that while he does his required media appearances, he feels ZERO obligation to give away information, answer their questions on their face, accept any implicit premise baked in to any question, etc. Beautiful.]
147 "You sometimes see a football player after he makes a mistake put his hands up around his head and bend over so that he's curled up, almost like he's hiding. This is anti-improvement. It's myopic. At a moment when he should be thinking about what he can do next for his team, he's stuck in his own head replaying his own failure... I can understand the feeling of wanting to punish yourself, but the reality is there's no time. There's no time in a football game for personal journeys into the psyche. Go drink some Gatorade and grab a tablet to review the play. It's time to improve." [I am very, very slowly discovering this in my own small way on the tennis court. When I make an error I do my best to shut down any reaction to it, avoid any negative self-talk, reset my computer and move on to the next point.]
151ff On the infamous game where he the Patriots ran up the score against the Washington Redskins under legendary Coach Joe Gibbs in 2007, taking the score to 52-0 [the final score was 52-7]; Belichick claims he was accused of poor sports sportsmanship, but in a way he says something even more condescending here! He says he wasn't concentrating on the other team so much as trying to play a full sixty minutes, because in previous seasons the team had let up in critical late-game situations. [In a way this is actually more insulting, because you are essentially saying that your opponent wasn't your opponent! They had bigger fish to fry: they were using this game to get ready to play the defending champions, the 8-0 Colts, the following week.]
155 "Here's a free motivation trick: whenever you feel lazy, close your eyes and imagine Gronk walking into your office and swatting you aside and taking your job. What's he doing? How hard is he doing it? Does he seem depressed to be working hard?" Note also comments here on Gronk not doing all that well in his visits/interviews with the Patriots, his college play was not spectacular, and he had had a back injury, but yet his coach there told Belichick that he was a hard worker, a tough player and "all he cares about is winning" so drafting him was a bet that he would recover from his injury and keep improving.
Chapter 9: Moving On
161 On Tom Brady's ACL and MCL tears in 2008; his return in 2009, but taking a huge hit in his third preseason game, getting knocked out of the game; Belichick was mic'd up for the whole season of games that year, and at that moment he responded to Tom Brady being knocked out of the game with pure silence. He was trying to figure out the next play and how to use the other quarterback given his skill set; on how players and assistant coaches take their cues on processing a loss from the head coach or their direct supervisor; on helping your group move on; on avoiding lying to yourself about what you just saw; on being a hyperrealist, borrowing the word from Ray Dalio here; on how Belichick says "I believe that being realistic does indeed put you in a position to make better decisions." [Reminds me of Dr. Henry Cloud's excellent book Integrity where he talks about having an orientation towards truth and thus finding and operating in reality. Also matches well with Krishnamurti's idea of truly "seeing."]
167-8 Belichick got offered graduate assistant position at NC State under Lou Holtz after writing to 125 football programs (and receiving fewer than 10 replies [huh, sounds like my how my career started right out of college!]), but one month later "Title IX rules came into effect and NC State awarded all graduate assistant positions to women. I never worked a day there. Lou Holtz was the first coach to hire me and the first coach to fire me." He then gets a non-paying part-time position with the Baltimore Colts, but then he asks to be full-time for the same pay, $0.
168 on the difference between staff who embrace the concept of understanding how everything works or staff who don't. Some employees are more focused on their specific career path. [I've found this too: there are employees who mostly see the "micro"--their specific job, the people they work with or report to--and little more. And then there are those who can also see the "macro" and really take in other things, like how the company is doing more broadly, how their work fits (or doesn't fit) with the overall company, what the implications of the overall company's fortunes might be, etc.]
172 Nice sidebar page here on Bill Parcells. "He showed confidence and trust in me, and he saw a future for me that I didn't see in myself."
175 On Belichick's "1% moment rule" where he set aside a very small portion of his time for enjoying what you do and why you do it, but then it's "on to Cincinnati" after that.
Chapter 10: Mistakes
179ff [This chapter opens with an interesting discussion about verbal expressions and mental representations that football people use with each other.] Belichick talks about how when you work with someone or spend time with someone you start to use the same phrases, the same expressions, you speak the same way; also during a game, when there isn't a lot of time to precisely articulate details you "have to smash a lot of information into as few syllables as possible." [I think with any partnership--in business, in marriage--you have to develop a common language and common mental representations and verbal shorthand to navigate reality, especially when you're navigating reality under stressful circumstances. Life sometimes really is like a football game.]
180 [Good quote here]: "All of this is the context for one of my favorite little pieces of football dialect, which has been in heavy usage in any high functioning team I've been around. It should be a part of your lexicon too (depending on your HR policies). Four words central to an accountable, healthy, improving operation that is all about sustained success. Four words I made sure I said more than any of my assistants or players.
'I f***** that up.'
Four words that will delight your colleagues (especially any who report to you) until they realize that the expectation embedded in the ownership of error is that they reciprocate when it's their turn." [Love this quote: first of all, "your blunt admission of error" (as Belichick phrases it) shows all others in your organization that you can admit error; second, it shows that you don't deny what happened, and third, it goes a long way toward solving the problem because everyone can now identify what went wrong.]
184ff Discussion here on the "exponential relationship" between status and responsibility. Belichick: "I am not insulated by having a lot of influence and power at work; I'm especially exposed." And then a discussion of the Patriots' lost undefeated season in 2008, where he f***** up by going for it on fourth down, while failing to accept that the Giants were playing much better defense than he thought they were capable of.
187 Two rules on mistakes: first, avoid the big ones; which happen when we're distracted, when we cut corners or downplay our process, lose rigor, or worry about minor aspects of the overall challenge.
188ff Second rule on mistakes: avoid mistakes that happen for the wrong reason, and that reason is almost always ego. Belichick makes interesting points here about subtle ego-based decision-making, like egotistical blindness to the reality that a situation is never the same twice; or trying to recreate your past success, he gives an example of getting into a groove in play calling or relying too much on prior judgments [this can be a big pitfall in investing as well]. The solution here is "committing proactively to adaptation," assuming change, and assuming circumstances will always be new, thus you prepare for what might be.
189ff Interesting discussion here on another mistake: Belichick's failure to draft Lamar Jackson in 2018 because they already had a full-time star quarterback, although Brady was aging at this point; their style and system had been built around Brady's skills, not Lamar Jackson's; Baltimore ended up drafting him. Also a much more subtle error here of listing Dan Klecko as an inactive player before the Super Bowl when it turned out that he could have been useful during the game as a backup defensive tackle.
193 Useful thoughts here on mental errors versus strategic errors: "...strategic errors are errors of judgment, usually made in good faith and with good reason, but with problematic execution." "...if there hadn't been a good reason, you wouldn't have built a whole strategy around these judgments." [Strategic errors don't look like errors until later; sometimes it's difficult to know in the moment which kind of error you're making, or even if there's an error at all. Interesting.]
193 Belichick talks here about how the Patriots' first three Super Bowls were won by a total of nine points, a few errors here and there would have meant those games would have flipped the other way. [Then he makes a hilariously harsh dig here]: "When competition is fierce and the margins are slim, only a few mistakes separate a team like the 2000s Patriots from a team like the 1990s Bills." [Ouch!]
Chapter 11: Communication
197ff On Belichick's duels with the media; on handling questions structured in certain ways to elicit a certain response; ultimately Belichick learns: "Some people do not talk straight. They think they are cute, but they have an agenda."
199 Nice one page sidebar with some high praise here on Tom Brady, "the absolute best at avoiding bad plays that hurt the offense." On keeping the team from losing, his elite preparation, going over the game plan five times between Friday and kickoff, good at recognizing favorable matchups, "the ultimate competitor." "I loved coaching Brady--he brought out the best in me. He was smart, mentally and physically tough, and the most dependable player I have coached." Drafting him "was the best decision I ever made."
201ff On Belichick's theory about what plays best when talking to the media: 1) a good entertaining clip and 2) information nobody else has. He cites Bill Parcells talking about the (then) revolutionary idea of a coach having general manager responsibilities for selecting players: Parcells said pithily in a press conference "If they want you to cook the dinner, at least they ought to let you shop for some of the groceries." [What a great quote!] Here, Parcells was expressing his expectations very clearly (he was between teams at this point) that this is what he wanted to do in no uncertain terms; the Jets hired him shortly thereafter, letting him "shop for the groceries." Belichick describes this quote admiringly: "Entertaining, clear, effective, and confident." Also a footnote on this page where Belichick cites that Parcells said this right after the Super Bowl during a break in sports news, and this allowed the media to start crafting story lines for the next season. Parcells knew this timing would get it into the headlines. [Absolutely fascinating.] "Consider how you speak to the power holders, who can make decisions that will benefit you."
203ff On knowing when not to speak as part of strategic communications; Belichick gives an example of being asked what does he tell the team after a loss or after a win; he won't say, because those words weren't "tuned" for journalists: "those are words that I don't want to have to make strategic. I don't want to have to censor myself or tune my words to make them sound right in the ears of journalists... who aren't paid to win football games but to win attention spans." [Another great point.] Also points here on never criticizing a player or coach in public.
204ff [A couple of other good nuggets right here on handling the media]: On using the phrase "Right now..." as a preface to bringing a conversation back to reality or back to the fundamentals or back to the present; "Right now we're focused on next week's game plan" for example; it protects you from veering off into a journalist's hypotheticals, it stops you from a headline-making gaffe; also: never repeat words or phrases from the question: "do not let them set the terms of the communication."
205 Finally a blurb here about an unnamed rookie running back who was asked by the media to describe himself as a player; Belichick gives it an example of letting speaking for yourself go too far. Belichick writes, amusingly, "He put himself--I am cringing as I type this--in the same sentence as Earl Campbell, Jamal Lewis, Bo Jackson, and Fred Taylor... I would truly have loved to have my skepticism shove back in my face, but he ended with fewer carries than Campbell might have in a single game. I will grant him this: his comment played great with the media. They loved it... My advice is to avoid making these types of predictions, publicly or privately--and let your performance speak for you." [For any turbo-autists who might care, this player's name was Cedric Cobbs.]
205-6 On Belichick openly admiring how Randy Moss would shout out, "Okay media, you got three questions! Make 'em good!"
207 "It was clear early on in my athletic career that I was not going to have an athletic career." [This is hilarious, especially if you hear it in Belichick's deadpan voice.] His point here is that he wasn't going to use "past dominance as a football player" to capture the attention of his team and colleagues; insights here also on speaking softly: it requires people to actively listen to you in order to hear you. Also "...there are rapidly diminishing returns on bluster and empty threats. Exaggeration can quickly tip over into inanity, and if you are constantly hitting one note (and threatening this or that catastrophic punishment) you'll start to lose credibility because you won't be able to follow through on everything you bluster about."
Chapter 12: Adversity
211ff Citing "In the Shreve High football stadium," a poem which "describes a basic orientation toward adversity." On the kind of personality Belichick has seen in football players over his lifetime: a personality to push forward in spite of setbacks or difficult circumstances; note also that Belichick's grandparents emigrated from Croatia, spoke no English, worked in the industrial region of the Midwest; Belichick's father played high school football and got recruited to play for Western Reserve University.
214ff Discussion of the NFLs' Thursday night games that screw up the entire game preparation routine, cutting the time in half.
218 On Eisenhower's quote about planning: "Plans are useless, but planning is indispensable."
219ff Cute story here about how the Patriots were in Buffalo, finishing up a game, and a snowstorm prevented the team from flying back to Boston; there was a huge hockey tournament in Buffalo at the time so there were no hotel rooms to stay in, so this team--a team that scripted so much of its activity--didn't have any place to stay the day after Christmas; the team ended up driving to Rochester, staying in a hotel there and finding a barbecue restaurant nearby where the team had a great evening bonding (apparently including Tom Brady winning a beer chugging contest); Belichick's point here is on selecting your attitude toward adversity. Finally the chapter ends with the quote "Adversity is universal. Get over yours before the other person gets over theirs."
Chapter 13: Confidence
225ff Belichick learns the word epiphenomenon: "I learned a new word while writing this book that I will probably forget after I finished. It has too many syllables to be useful outside of a laboratory or a hospital, but there's just no other word precise enough to describe what we're going to talk about." On confidence as an epiphenomenon, something relational, it doesn't exist in a vacuum, it's not something you can pick up off the shelf. You can't buy confidence or learn it "and you sure as hell won't get it from reading this chapter or this book." [The reader gets the feeling that he's going to go Victor Frankel on us and say that confidence, like happiness, cannot be pursued; rather it "ensues."]
226 "Practice makes confidence."
229 On seeing things for what they are and recognizing you don't have all the answers. Also on never letting other people diagnose your confidence level. Note also the footnote at the bottom of the page here on "real confidence" not going up and down with wins and losses.
230 Comments here on Darrelle Revis and his foresight; on the power of perception and awareness and anticipation that allowed what would normally be a reactive defensive football player to force offenses to react to him. [Also comments here on how in football, offense is assignment-based but defense is reaction-based--something that is also true in basketball and, interestingly, in tennis too.]
231-2 On "spending" your confidence: interesting anecdote here where the Patriots played the Steelers at home in 2002, a team that they couldn't run against and a team that had usually beaten them that year; the Patriots did something they'd never done before: they played no-huddle football, calling 25 consecutive pass plays, and won the game. "Having just one plan prepared would have left our overall confidence shattered when it wasn't working out."
235 On Bobby Knight's maxim that if your team is overconfident, or takes the opponent lightly, that it is the coach's fault.
Chapter 14: Change
241ff On situations you know are coming versus situations you don't know are coming: "first and 10" in football terms, or your Monday morning routine before your work week actually starts, before situations you're not expecting happen start happening. The idea here is to prepare for what's unlikely to happen; Belichick calls it dealing with "situational football."
245ff Belichick gives a few examples of some unusual plays that happened, talking about how the team practiced each of these situations. "Now imagine all the situations we practice for that never came up." On practicing adaptability.
Chapter 15: Culture
261 On how "The Patriot Way" isn't a thing, somebody else came up with it.
263 Good blurb here on Damon Huard, the Patriots backup quarterback, who ran the scout team before the Patriots played the Colts in 2003, so that it could be prepared for Peyton Manning's offense; Huard won that week's game ball, even though he never played in the game.
264 On the team's four line motto placed at the entrance of the facility: Do your job, Work hard, Be attentive, Put the team first; and then on the opposite side of the sign, that you'd see leaving the facility: Ignore the noise, Manage expectations, Speak for yourself, Don't believe or fuel the hype. This was "meant to be understood as descriptions of our expectations, for everyone in the organization to see whenever they entered or exited the building."
266ff More elaboration here: do your job as opposed to doing somebody else's job and thus enabling the other guy to get lazy; knowing your job; also on the difference between making a production out of working hard and actually working hard; on the idea of being attentive plus working hard equals improvement; "You cannot improve without the knowledge of how to improve and actually doing something about it by working hard."
277 Extremely intriguing (and cryptic) quote here, as Belichick talks about where he got the blueprint for his "team first, then teammate then finally self" concept: "In retrospect, putting the priorities of the football team ahead of ownership goals ultimately led to a fractured relationship in Foxborough." [This is the closest he gets to mentioning Patriots owner Robert Kraft, whose name is conspicuously missing throughout in the book, particularly in the acknowledgements section--this notable omission was talked about widely in the media after this book came out].
Epilogue
284 Cute ending here: after 49 years in the NFL, he writes, "I am... on to Chapel Hill."
To Read:
Steve Belichick: Football Scouting Methods
Michael Connelly: The President's Team