Bill Belichick Has Even More Football Knowledge Thanks To NFL Films
BOSTON (CBS) -- Watch out, world. Bill Belichick's football knowledge has grown.
Yes, the smartest man in football got a little smarter, thanks to his involvement with NFL Films. The Patriots head coach was one of the greats of the game tabbed by NFL Films to work as an analyst on its "NFL 100 Greatest" series, and was part of the panel tasked with picking the 100 best players in NFL history. That required quite a bit of film study, which a football encyclopedia like Belichick didn't see as work at all.
That means Belichick spent his entire offseason watching football from every era of the NFL. He learned quite a bit along the way, expanding his already extensive football knowledge.
"I learned a lot. It was a great experience," Belichick said of the project on his Tuesday conference call. "I watched a lot of film of players in the '30s, the '40s, the '50s and the '60s. I watched quite a bit of that over the summer and last spring, and it was very enlightening in studying the great players in different eras and how the game was played. You see some plays, you see some strategy, but you also see the players, and not just the guys you're watching, obviously, but the other guys that are involved there."
In addition to watching tons of football, Belichick also talked with other great minds of the game like Raiders coaching legend John Madden and Ron Wolf, the former GM of the Green Bay Packers.
"The whole process was great, and I think in a way, it's definitely made me a better coach from the things that I've learned," said Belichick. "It's reinforced some things, and it's also opened my eyes to some, I would say, other areas of coaching that I don't want to say were overlooked – that would be the wrong word – but the emphasis maybe has been more, since I started doing that, on certain fundamental things that are I think critical to the foundation of successful plays and successful teams and successful football. So yeah, it was a very great honor to be a part of it, and very educational, informative, and I would say, motivating to indulge in those in the process."
All of that film study made Belichick a better coach??? That's bad news for the rest of the NFL. Even at 67, the hooded mastermind behind six Super Bowl titles in New England is eager to learn more about the game that he's dominated for the last two decades.