Vince Wilfork Shares One Secret Of Bill Belichick's Coaching Methods

By Michael Hurley, CBS Boston

BOSTON (CBS) -- If Bill Belichick is the GOAT, what makes him so great? It's one of those questions that can't ever be answered in a simple fashion. It's a complex question that demands complex answers.

So whenever one of his former players sheds a light on particular aspects of his coaching style, it always helps to paint the picture of how Belichick operates and why his teams have won so many football games.

Vince Wilfork did that in Tom Brady's newest documentary episode for ESPN. The installment focused on the 2014 season and the Patriots' run to their first Super Bowl in a decade, so Wilfork's presence made a lot of sense. He won a Super Bowl in his first year in New England in 2004 and his final year in 2014.

In the course of the episode, Wilfork explained one aspect of Belichick's coaching that allows his defenses to be prepared in more situations than others might be.

"I try to steal any type of information from a formation, from a guy saying something, to a quarterback and how he's looking, from the running back. I'll try to get any pre-notion of anything that can tip me off -- always. A lot of that comes from Bill Belichick," Wilfork says in the documentary. "He made us learn formations, motions, running back action. He made us learn offensive line, blocking schemes. He made us learn all of that. Because when a quarterback comes out and he says something that I have learned, thinking I'm a defensive lineman and we're defensive players and we're not gonna know that, here I got an edge."

It's not the secret to Belichick's success. But it's part of the larger picture. Though it may be impossible to fully compile everything that makes Belichick Belichick, these little slivers are always interesting to hear.

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