Bill Belichick: ‘I Never Really Thought of Myself as a Pro Coach’

You left the NFL and took on a new challenge: college sports. How did you talk to yourself about, “OK, this moment for me is over, and now here comes a new moment, and here’s how I’m going to prepare”?

One of the things we talk about in the book is to be comfortable being uncomfortable. I’ve always embraced those challenges and said, “OK well, here’s what we have to work with, let’s figure out how to do it.” I think being comfortable being uncomfortable is sort of a theme for me. Rather than looking at it as a big hurdle and a big problem, I said, “OK well, I’m good with new challenges and a new situation. Let’s go to work now to figure out how to make it work.”

You talk a lot in the book about the inspiration your dad was to you. He was at one point a coach at UNC. What does it mean to you to go back there, kind of in your father’s footsteps?

I think the bigger thing, really, is just the opportunity of coaching college football, and that’s something that I always wanted to do. I never really thought of myself as a pro coach, to tell you the truth. I was headed to N.C. State as a graduate assistant, and then when Title IX was passed, that knocked me out of that opportunity, and then I just ended up with a career in the NFL.

I’ve always wanted to coach college. But those jobs open up and close in early to mid-December, so it’s really hard, logistically, to go from the NFL to college. And the fact that I was available [after leaving the Patriots last year] gave me an opportunity to look into the situation, and I felt like it was a great school, great brand with great support. North Carolina has been really good at almost every sport except for football in the last 45 years, so I really feel good about the opportunity there.

Belichick gets doused with Gatorade after leading the New England Patriots to a 24-21 victory over the Philadelphia Eagles in Super Bowl XXXIX in February 2005.

Marc Serota/Reuters/Redux

Your dad coached at UNC, and now you’re there with your sons. [Steve Belichick is UNC’s defensive coordinator and linebackers coach, and Brian Belichick is an assistant coach.] How important is that generational legacy and the opportunity to take knowledge from your dad and pass it on to the next generation?

It’s really a special feeling. Football’s been great to our family. My dad grew up in a steel town, and there wasn’t really any way out for him, but football came along, and that enabled him to go to college and then eventually to get back into coaching after he served in the Navy. Now we have three generations of coaches: my dad, myself and all three of my kids. [Daughter Amanda is head coach of the women’s lacrosse team at College of the Holy Cross.] I never tried to influence them into coaching. That was their choice and I’m glad they did it, but I would be proud if they were doing something else, too. I think there are some things that all three of them do better than I do, and I’ve learned from them, and hopefully they’ve been able to take some things from me.

Do you have any rules for dealing with losses?

After every game, win or lose, we follow the same process. Sometimes you could do a lot of things well and come up short, and sometimes you can do a lot of things poorly but still manage to win the game. I always try to be very objective and honest with myself, our staff and the players — regardless of the score: What did we do well, what did we do poorly, what will we do differently, and how can we do things better next week? And whether that was after a big win or a tough loss or anywhere in between, the biggest thing for me is really improvement.

Belichick's "The Art of Winning" was published earlier this month.

Simon & Schuster

Every day is an opportunity, and every game is an opportunity for us to improve. It doesn’t matter whether it’s preseason in August or whether it’s the AFC Championship Game. When we walk in the door, our goals are the same every day: Do your job, work hard, pay attention to details, and put the team first. To sustain success over two decades, you need that kind of consistency. Every day is an opportunity to get better.

You’ve had to put an end to people’s careers. How do you talk to somebody who’s reached a physical limit that you know they can’t overcome?

It’s really hard. One of the best lessons I learned was from [former General Electric CEO] Jack Welch, who taught me that you treat them the same way on the way out as you did on the way up. You show them respect, you appreciate what they did, you try to help them in any way you can after they leave. And then when they do leave, as bitter as it is or as hard as it is, at least you maintain that dignity, and they’ll tell their teammates who are still on the team the way you handled it. And that goes a long way for the players who stay on the team who weren’t released, because they know that you’re doing the best you can for them.

What is the No. 1 point of philosophy that you have when it comes to staying successful?

One of the chapters in the book is on accountability and saying “I screwed up.” Everything in this book is about being on a team. And when you’re on a team and something goes wrong, what you want to try to do is identify what happened, and, if it’s your fault, step up and say “That’s my fault, I screwed it up.” That gives everybody a ton of comfort to move forward and not second-guess themselves. When you’re in the middle of the game, time is of the essence. Anytime you can identify your mistake as the problem and say, “That’s my mistake, I fixed it, let’s move forward,” we’re good to go.

And as the leader, when you say that, it gives everybody a little bit of accountability. They say, “Well, hey, if he’s going to say when he’s screwed up, I can say that I screwed it up too.” That was the chapter that I really wanted to include, because I’ve made as many mistakes as anybody. The real question is, did you try to learn from them and not make them again?