The pads all over Belichick’s cluttered office were his defense against this kind of fatal flaw. Essentially, they were plays from game tape printed out on an 8½-by-11 sheet of paper with the precise movements of each member of the offense and defense delineated. And when I say precise, I mean precise. “Padding” the games was a job for young wannabe coaches. It took at least four or five hours to do a game, to make sure Belichick would have the exact details he needed in front of him. The notes on each play went far beyond just basic X’s and O’s. For starters, Belichick wants to know how, when, where, and why every player on the field moved during every play. He wants to know, for example, if there is a variation of even a couple of inches in the offensive line’s splits or if the quarterback likes to throw to his right or is especially deadly on out patterns.
Josh McDaniels, the Patriots offensive coordinator, began his coaching career padding games. After handing over the first few, he got them returned with color-coded Post-its highlighting his various mistakes and omissions. Belichick takes great pride and pleasure in helping and developing young assistants, and with McDaniels he had basically graded his work, adding colored lines to indicate more accurately the movement of the play on both sides of the ball and entering a host of extra data. McDaniels is a proud and competitive man. It didn’t take long until he was padding a game in under four hours, fully confident that there would be no boomerang Post-it notes.
Belichick believes that coaches who learn their craft by padding games are much better coaches on Sunday, even though the task is so labor-intensive that it basically requires them to go without sleep. It’s exhausting work, and Belichick knows it because he often padded games himself. But to him, learning every detail of how an offense plans to attack is far more valuable than rest.
3. DON’T COACH DEFENSE, TEACH IT
“In a very real way,” Bill Walsh once wrote, “everything I did was teaching in some manner or other.” The truth is that at their core all good coaches are great teachers and communicators. The trait ran deep in Belichick’s family. His mom, Jeannette, was a teacher who spoke seven languages and had a lifetime subscription to The New Yorker. Lou Holtz, the former Notre Dame head coach, often asked his assistants, “Are you a schemer or a teacher?” He wanted to know if they were more interested in doodling plays or teaching teams how to win. Blackboard coaching is a killer. Schemes drawn up in classrooms are undefeated; whoever has the chalk last wins. On blackboards across the league there are elaborate defenses being created that, in two dimensions at least, seem certain to shut down any offense. In real life? Doodles usually don’t translate. But teaching always does.
Sometimes that’s because although they might look incredible, what the play diagrams represent on the field isn’t so smart at all. Or, worse, players can’t properly execute what the doodle demands. But more often than not, the problem is that players don’t understand what they’re being asked to do. And that’s the fault of the coach, not the doodles. When the TV cameras cut to a coach on a sideline after his defense has just allowed a big play, even amateur lip-readers can see the frustrated man saying some version of “What are we doing?” We can’t hear the response, obviously, but honestly, it doesn’t matter. If the coach is asking that question, it’s probably because in some ways the players were, too. If someone has been left wide open, it’s because the players didn’t know what they were doing, and that happened because the coaches didn’t help them understand their responsibilities when they had the chance.
George Seifert, Walsh’s defensive coordinator with the Niners before becoming his successor, was a brilliant assistant: innovative, creative, and not intimidated by a West Coast offense his unit had to face every day in practice. What really set him apart as a coordinator, though, was his teaching skills. Seifert knew how to transfer what was in those elaborate schemes he drew up—the concepts, the assignments, the visual keys, and even the physical requirements—into execution on the field by his players, much to the chagrin of the crusty scouts on the payroll. Those old-timers often complained to me that Seifert’s playbook was too big and too hard to learn and that defense was a reactionary game, not a thinking game. Seifert proved them wrong year in and year out. He didn’t just draw a doodle of a race car; he knew how to build it and how to teach people to drive it. He knew how to implement his schemes.
In Cleveland, our defensive backfield coach—and later defensive coordinator—was a great teacher named Rick Venturi. Over the years Venturi had mastered the extremely complicated Red 2 scheme from top to bottom and even added his own variations and twists to it. But Venturi’s real genius lay in knowing the defense so well that he understood its one shortcoming: It was really difficult to teach. He often warned young members of his staff that “learning Red 2 is not natural for the players; it’s hard to understand and harder to perform.” Not everyone was ready to learn or even play match coverage, and even fewer of us were ready to teach it. How well we taught our players was going to make the difference between success and failure. Venturi knew that just because something like “handing off receivers” looked great on the blackboard, that didn’t mean it would necessarily look great on the field. What Venturi taught us all in Cleveland is that the greatest scheme in the world is only as good as the coaches teaching it.
4. MAKE THE OFFENSE PLAY LEFT-HANDED
This is a classic Belichick tactic: taking offenses out of their comfort zones by preventing them from doing what they do best. Former longtime NFL offensive coordinator Jim Shofner, who was the interim head coach of the Browns before Belichick, described what his successor did as “making you play left-handed.” Of course, everyone in the game is trying to do this. But what makes Belichick different, what makes him worthy of Shofner’s catchphrase, is the way he commits to his plan.
Take the way the Patriots played the Colts with Peyton Manning under center, running back Edgerrin James, and receivers Reggie Wayne and Marvin Harrison. That’s some offensive firepower, but after padding a few of the Colts games, Belichick learned that he could neutralize that explosiveness by setting a hard edge to keep James from getting around the corner and up the field. Belichick game-planned to set that edge no matter what; even if he had to commit two extra players and run the rest of his scheme with nine defenders, he would do it. And if Manning hit a few long passes or if the Colts gashed the middle of the defense for back-to-back first downs, so be it. Most coaches, of course, would instantly abandon their edge-first scheme at the first sign of weakness, but not Belichick.
If the Colts had ever discovered the discipline to ditch the outside running game and just blast away on the inside instead, the Patriots would have been in big trouble all those years. Because he knew Manning and the Colts almost better than they knew themselves, though, Belichick counted on them growing bored with an inside run game. So the Patriots would double Harrison, use their best corner to contain Wayne, and wait for Manning to force the ball into double coverage. All that study and Belichick’s brilliant mind led to a game plan with one goal: take away what the Colts do best, and force other players to step up. That’s making them play left-handed. (Belichick’s overall record against the Manning-led Colts? 12–8.)
Belichick takes away what the opposing team does best, but he also takes away what specific players do best. It’s a subtle but crucial difference. He personally breaks down every offensive player to understand his strengths within his team’s scheme. Then he moves around his defense’s talents to best serve the system he has created for the week. Most teams put their best corner on the best receiver. Naturally, Belichick does the opposite. As he did with the Colts, he doubles the best receiver with his second and third corners so that he can line up his best corner against the second-best receiver and create two matchup advantages. Similarly, Belichick doesn’t see All-Pro Atlanta receiver Julio Jones as a classic Z receiver; he sees him as the one man the defense needs to stop. When the Falcons have to m
ake a play, wise men expect the ball to go to Jones. Belichick is a wise man. Hence the double coverage on Jones. Take away the player who can hurt you, force Matt Ryan to find someone else, and the Falcons are playing left-handed.
Say the opponent is an excellent running team, which the folks watching at home know because the announcers have thrown the “relevant” stats at them: Team X is third in the NFL in rushing. But that fact means nothing to Belichick. He wants to know where they gain those yards. Off right tackle? Over the left guard? Once he has isolated the player who triggers an offense’s tendencies, he can put his best run-down player, for many years nose tackle Vince Wilfork, at the exact spot that will cause the most debilitating roadblock.
5. TIMING IS EVERYTHING, SO DISRUPT YOUR OPPONENT’S
When Manning came to Foxborough for the 2004 AFC divisional playoff game, the Colts’ offense had been virtually impossible to slow down during the season or in their wild card victory against the Broncos, when they scored seven touchdowns in 10 possessions. That offense was nowhere to be found on January 16 against the Patriots; the Colts had the ball for barely 22 minutes and scored three points. One week the Colts were unstoppable; the next they were on their way home.
Did Belichick install an elaborate scheme that befuddled Manning? No. In fact, he simplified his plan by going old school and roughing up receivers—legally—as they ran their routes. Again, here’s Belichick the pragmatist: If the Colts’ record-setting offense is based on timing between the quarterback and the receivers, the easiest way to defend it is to throw a wrench into that intricate mechanism. Belichick did it through the art of rerouting: hitting a receiver on his route to alter his prescribed direction. Rerouting is not holding or interference; it’s a stab or a push intended to momentarily disrupt—and effectively blow up—the precise timing of a pass play.
It’s a technique he mastered under Bill Parcells in New York: A little messed-up timing plus an onrushing linebacker meant big trouble for the offense, plain and simple. It got its best workout in the Giants’ many high-stakes battles against Bill Walsh’s West Coast offense. Belichick realized that the only way to slow down such a well-choreographed attack was to bully its receivers. Need more proof? Just ask Isaac Bruce, Torry Holt, and the rest of those Greatest Show on Turf Rams, the ones who lost to the Patriots in Super Bowl XXXVI.
I got a full-blown education on the art of rerouting during my second season with Belichick in Cleveland. After each game, I joined the defensive staffers, ostensibly to help them review our performance but mostly to listen and learn from their analyses. With Saban controlling the video, I sat, mostly quietly, as linebacker coach Al Groh and line coach Jim Bates went over every detail of their units’ work. Rerouting had already become such a huge element of our schemes that opponents would specifically attack the area of the field where the reroute occurred. For instance, offenses would run a seam route down the middle of the field just to occupy the linebacker. Meanwhile, they’d send a receiver across the field to the exact spot the linebacker had vacated. I love this kind of check/checkmate aspect of football strategy. The play—which we called a seam crosser—was a surefire way to exploit Belichick’s emphasis on rerouting, but only if they could get the rerouter to commit on the seam route. So, checkmate: Saban and Groh instructed their linebackers to punch, disrupt, and then turn back to cover the next crosser.
This heavy-handed physical tactic enraged many pass-happy teams but none more than the Peyton Manning–era Colts and their general manager Bill Polian. Polian grew tired of seeing Belichick’s Patriots bang around his receivers. After the 2004 AFC playoff game, he only said: “I give the Patriots credit for what they did; I won’t go beyond that.” Unfortunately for New England, Polian also happened to be a member of the NFL’s competition committee, and by the next season, wouldn’t you know it, the NFL was instructing officials to enforce its illegal contact rule more strictly.
In the current era of intricately timed passing offenses, disruption remains the key. But Polian made sure that playing defense beyond the five-yard grace area, especially against rhythm passing games, would be much more difficult from then on. It didn’t matter that Polian was thinking only about his Colts when he led the charge to enforce illegal contact and help hurry-up offenses and intricately timed passing schemes. Suddenly, the scales were tipped toward the passing game, and further rule book tweaks just put a thumb on that scale.
Belichick being Belichick, though, he didn’t complain or whine or lobby the competition committee. He rebuilt his own offense using the rule change he inspired and won three more Super Bowls with it.
6. DEFUSE EXPLOSIVE PLAYS
In 1994, when the Browns headed to Dallas for a late Saturday afternoon game, making the Cowboys play left-handed wasn’t going to be easy. That offense featured Michael Irvin at wideout; Jay Novacek at tight end; the man who would become the NFL’s all-time leading rusher, Emmitt Smith; and (maybe most of all) future Hall of Famer Troy Aikman. The Boys were so loaded that they didn’t have a left hand. The closest thing they had to a left hand was wide receiver Alvin Harper, who would have been a primary option on most other teams.
If we couldn’t make them play left-handed, we could do the next best thing: take away their big play potential with sure tackling and an awareness of where their chunk plays came from. Most NFL teams convert about 35 percent of their third downs, and that’s not going to get you down the field. A drive is far more likely to end up putting points on the board if it includes at least one run or pass of more than 20 yards. When coaches talk about a game or an entire season coming down to just a handful of key plays, this is what they’re talking about. Belichick’s plan for Dallas was simple: We’d let them have their catches and yards as long as they didn’t get too many yards all at once. And it worked. Smith got his 100-plus yards, but it took him 26 carries to get them. Irvin had seven catches, but the longest went for 18 yards. The longest play of the day was a 26-yard run by Smith. We held the Boys to 14 points and won.
I always laugh when a defensive coach says, “Besides that one 55-yard play, we played great run defense.” A great run defense doesn’t give up 55-yard runs. You know what else great run defenses don’t do? They don’t erase outlying plays from their record of the game; they focus on them and try to understand how they were allowed to happen so that they don’t happen again. On the jubilant plane ride back from Dallas, Belichick did not say, “If you ignore that one long run from Smith, we held him to 86 yards on 25 carries.” He said, “We did a good job of fixing the edge after Smith gained those 26 yards on the second drive of the game, which is why we held him to 86 yards on 25 carries the rest of the way.”
7. REMEMBER NEWTON’S SECOND LAW
When Saban ran our defense in Cleveland, he wanted to be in the perfect defense for each play. The thought of giving up 5 yards drove him as crazy as giving up 50. His impossible dream manifested in countless checks and adjustments before the snap of the ball. Decades later, you can still watch an Alabama game and see all the defenders looking toward the sideline for his last-second adjustments. Belichick is the exact opposite. In fact, before we hired him as our head coach in Cleveland, I told Belichick that I had watched him on the sidelines at a Giants game and noticed his hands in the pockets of his red Starter jacket and asked where he kept his call sheet. And in classic Belichick fashion, he said, “I call the same thing every play; why do I need a call sheet?” Belichick prefers to work with few checks and adjustments because above all he wants his defense playing fast. He wants them doing, not wondering what to do. He wants them reacting, not thinking. He hates mistakes, but if they happen, he wants them to happen while his defense is going 110 miles per hour.
Defensive team speed starts with the middle linebacker, the Mike. He is the quarterback of the defense and needs to be both mentally and physically fast. He is the one responsible for calling the defenses and getting everyone positioned correctly before th
e snap. But he is also the one who dictates the tempo. A Mike who can get from sideline to sideline in the run game and fulfill coverage or attacking assignments in the pass game keeps a team moving apace.
The best indicator of a fast defense: forced fumbles. I’m sure you’re familiar with Newton’s second law of motion, but in case it has slipped your mind, here’s a refresher: Acceleration is directly proportional to net force because net force equals mass times acceleration. Newton probably wasn’t thinking about football, but he could have been. When a defender hits a ball carrier, the best thing that can happen is that the ball comes loose. And when a faster, bigger defender hits a ball carrier, Newton says the ball is that much more likely to come loose. Show me a defense with a low number of forced fumbles and I will show you a defense with a slower-than-average Mike. Show me a fast-thinking, fast-moving defense and I will show you harder hits, more balls on the ground, and—all other things being equal—more wins.
8. THINK PRESSURE FIRST, SACKS SECOND
It seems like every great coach in history has an opinion on the art and science of blitzing. Vince Lombardi once said, “Blitzing is a form of weakness.” When he coached, that might have been true. Back then, a blitz meant sending six or seven men toward the quarterback while the secondary covered the receivers man to man. If the defensive front couldn’t get to the quarterback, the whole unit was in trouble. Of course, in those days, with the limitations placed on offensive linemen in regard to using their hands, not being able to get to the quarterback was never much of a problem for the defensive front. That is no longer the case. Changes to the rules have opened up the passing game, and defenses need to be creative in the ways they pressure the passer to make him throw before he wants to. That means being smarter about the kinds of blitzes sent at opponents.
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