The first time I met Bill Belichick was decades ago. It was after a training camp practice. We talked briefly and in those 20 minutes he crammed so much football, ideas, beliefs and strategies into the conversation it felt like a talk with an encyclopedia.
More conversations would follow. Football on top of football wrapped inside a big ol’ football. As you spent more time around the Patriots, you’d notice something else: Belichick ran the team with an iron fist. This is not breaking news. Many know this. It just bears repeating in this moment as we watch Belichick’s personal life spill out like it’s a Teen Vogue cover story.
For those who may not fully know, you have to understand this: When Belichick, now the North Carolina coach, controlled the Patriots for over two decades, it was the most ruthlessly run, tightest controlled organization in the history of the NFL, and maybe in the history of American professional sports. There weren’t many loose lips. Leaks happened but they were rare. Patriots players worried about saying the wrong thing to the media so not to irritate their head coach.
Much of the organization was on super-duper secret lockdown. It was this way for almost the entirety of Belichick’s tenure. And he rarely, if ever, spoke about his personal life. It was on to Cincinnati. We’re gonna look at the film. Do your job. We can only control what we can control. Player expressions and beliefs were often suppressed for the good of the system. Former Cincinnati Bengals wideout T.J. Houshmandzadeh once said of Patriots players: ‘They are completely scared of Bill, it’s a dictatorship in New England.’
And anything about his personal life? Pfftt. Almost never. The Patriot Way was to disembowel everyone of personality for the benefit of the organization. That included, to be blunt, Belichick doing that to himself.
The Belichick we are seeing now, living such a public life, with all kinds of personal drama and Instagram messages and human messiness is so foreign, so alien, it’s like: Who is this person?
Belichick did have at times a messy professional life. There was Spygate and Deflategate. There were gates. But personally? Almost nothing at all publicly.
What we’re seeing now from Belichick is in some ways a good thing. He has shed his android exoskeleton to publicly show human frailty and emotions. Love this. He’s truly one of us after all. It also shows Belichick struggling with control. With the Patriots, he controlled the news. He controlled the PSIs of footballs. But now that he’s promoting a new book, the news controls him. This has to be extremely uncomfortable for Belichick.
When Belichick’s girlfriend, Jordon Hudson, repeatedly interrupted Belichick’s interview with CBS Mornings, it was, well, absolutely wild to watch. Tom Brady would have been scared to do that. None of this is to criticize Hudson, either. There are elements of misogyny entering the chat in this story and we all need to be careful how we’re describing her.
The point isn’t the messiness. It’s that we’re seeing it. If you had told me ten years ago Belichick’s girlfriend would be interrupting him during a television show about a book he was promoting, I would have laughed in your face.
Or if you had told me that his girlfriend would have released an email Belichick sent to a small group of people in his inner circle, I would not have stopped laughing in your face.
There is one part of the email that is extremely Belichick and it’s him trash talking the media.
“This is about what I expected from the media,’ the email read in part. ‘We went through how important it was for me to put ‘I (expletive deleted) up’ in the book, and of course, that is the feature of this article — which is mostly about admitting mistakes and talking about a Super Bowl mistake. I am fine with putting mistakes in the book, but I am certainly not surprised that of 260+ pages, that is what they would highlight. And of course, the ‘I (expletive deleted) up’ is the click bait they used for the story. We’ll see what the title of the article is, which I noticed has been conveniently left out — do we have approval on that. I would approve this article if we can also approve the headline, which is actually more important than the article.’
Then there was this notable part: ‘I will say again, that I want this book to be presented as a look at my professional life and how I did my job on the way up to, and as the leader of an organization that grew from a $500 m franchise to an $8 b organization that played in 10 and won 6 Super Bowls over 25 years. This book is about how I did my job, and lessons from my 50 years in and around the NFL — not a bathroom book that highlights my mistakes.’
What you hear in that graph is Belichick losing control and not liking it. Welcome, Bill!
All of this begs the question:
Who is this Bill Belichick?
And what have you done with his android body?
