Who Are The Coaches Bill Belichick Wishes To Have Worked With?

Although Bill Belichick, the head coach of the New England Patriots, is the best coach in NFL history and has few parallels, he had one coach in mind above all others: Bengals owner Paul Brown.

Who Are The Coaches Bill Belichick Wishes To Have Worked With?

Belichick was recently asked by The 33rd Team which head coach in NFL history he would most like to square off against. The veteran head coach of the New England Patriots answered Mike Tannenbaum’s question by stating which coach he would most want to work with.

While attending Brown’s summer camps as a youngster and spending some time around the great head coach of the Cleveland Browns and Cincinnati Bengals, Belichick stated he wished he had the chance to work with the three-time NFL champion.

“Paul Brown at the top of the list,” Belichick said. “I was able to spend some time around Coach Brown, both at Cleveland when I was really young, and then at Cincinnati, you know, when I was a teenager, and we went to their summer camps and stuff, but I would’ve loved to have done that.”

“I think he really took the West Coast offense, and it was so far ahead of its time with the West Coast principles that Bill Walsh took and turned it into the West Coast offense,” Belichick said. “But, you know, Coach Brown also was so innovative in so many other ways, whether it was the play-calling, whether it was the cab squad, the screen and draw plays that evidently he kind of stumbled into. But that was kind of the creative way that he worked was to see things and figure out how it would disrupt the defense. I know Coach (Tom) Landry was like that, too.”

Belichick also praised Brown’s focus on basics and discipline. When Belichick was Cleveland’s head coach and Brown worked in the team’s executive office, Belichick spent a lot of time with Jim Brown and learned a lot about Brown from him.

“When I worked with Jim, and we’d have a lot of conversations, Jim would refer to Paul Brown very frequently,” Belichick said. “(Jim Brown would say), ‘This is the way Paul did it.’ Or, ‘Paul did it a little bit differently.’ Or, ‘Here’s why Paul did it this way or that way.’ And it really gave me a lot of insight from a player’s perspective into the way that Paul coached the team.”

His list includes a number of other legendary coaches whose careers he had the opportunity to work with. “Obviously, coaching for Bill Parcells was a huge impact on my life and my career,” he said.

With the New York Giants, Belichick served as Parcells’ defensive coordinator. At that time, Belichick sparred with Landry and other “great offensive minds” like Joe Gibbs and Walsh.

Belichick has a wish list of coaches that includes Vince Lombardi and George Halas. Al Davis is also, despite the fact that Davis is more known as the managing general partner of the Raiders. Belichick respects Davis’ coaching background.

 

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