But outside of a couple audacious calls he makes each season, Belichick isn’t an especially strange coach. It’s not like the Patriots’ defense is Finnegans Wake, scheme-wise. They do what works and remain flexible. The only reason Troy Brown ever played nickel corner for the Pats is because the team didn’t have a halfway-decent nickel corner, not because his coach was trying to show the rest of the league he could use a slot receiver in his secondary and still win games. Belichick isn’t inscrutable. The refrain of his most famous speech is “Do your job.” He decided, before a Super Bowl, to remind his team that football is about execution. That’s about as orthodox as it gets.
Nice little read on BB. One thing that always kind of annoys me is people who call BB a genius and then hold it against him when he makes wrong decisions or his team loses. I simply prefer to think of him as one of the best football coaches of all time, and we can save the “genius” label for those who actually deserve it.