Why is Bill Belichick still coaching? McCourty, Slater take a crack at answering that question
BOSTON -- Why is Bill Belichick still coaching football?
On the surface, it's a preposterous question. He's one of the greatest coaches in the history of the sport, he's still able to coach, and he's still driven to coach. So, obviously, Bill Belichick will coach.
At the same time, as the 70-year-old Belichick enters his 48th season as an NFL coach and 28th as a head coach, he already has outlasted his own expectations.
"I have a hard time picturing not coaching football -- at this point. You know, I mean I don't want to be like Marv Levy and coaching when I'm in my 70s," Belichick famously said on "A Football Life" after the 2009 season. "You don't have to worry about that. But fortunately, that's a few years off."
Of course, Belichick changed his outlook, stating in 2019 that he feels better than he anticipated and thus no longer saw 70 as the finish line of his career.
Whatever the case may be, Belichick is back for another year in Foxboro. Devin McCourty and Matthew Slater, two of the longest-tenured members of the team, speculated about why they'll be playing under the same head coach for their 15th (Slater) and 13th (McCourty) seasons in New England.
"I think anybody, when you have to do anything with sports, it's the competitive nature. You love competing. You even see guys when they stop playing or stop coaching, they find other things to be competitive in. And obviously I can't speak for him, but I'm sure the competition and being able to be in here and probably working with his sons and everything all play a role in still coaching," said McCourty.
Perhaps just like Belichick with coaching, McCourty spoke from the player's perspective about how he has always intended to play as long as he's physically able to do so.
"I know just speaking for me, it's just the enjoyment. You love doing it. You still feel healthy, you still feel like you can do it, and I think that's when it gets tough, when it starts to be a struggle to kind of do what your normal tasks are, to fulfill that role at a job," McCourty said. "And when you don't feel like that and you're still enjoying it, it's kind of like why not? Why not continue to do it? So I'm excited, man. You know, he always has the same energy, always has the same expectations for the team and for individuals. And it's our job to kind of raise our standards and what we do out of whatever his expectation or standards are."
Slater, who was drafted by Belichick out of UCLA all the way back in 2008, says he can still see the passion in his head coach.
"I certainly don't want to attempt to put myself in his headspace, but I've been around Coach, I've had the great fortune of being around Coach for a long time now. And what I see in him is just a passion to pursue excellence in an area that he loves, without question. He loves this game," Slater said. "He loves the history of the game. He loves everything that goes into this game, and he has a great deal of respect for it. And I think when you love something, you stay motivated to pursue it, to pour into it, to continue to evolve, to continue to approach it with a great sense of gratitude and urgency. So I think it's his love for the game that compels him. Obviously, he's a competitor at heart. He wants to continue to go out and coach good football teams -- smart, tough, physical football teams."
Approaching his own 37th birthday this coming November, Slater has long outlasted most NFL careers already. That's perhaps helped shape his feeling on what his coach's outlook may be.
"What a blessing for him, at age 70, to be able to be healthy enough to do it, physically, mentally and emotionally. And to just have the opportunity," Slater said. "I'm sure if you ask him, he'd tell you he's grateful for that. Because there are not very many people that are able to do it for the amount of time that he's done. So I definitely have learned a lot from just watching him. You talk about commitment to a craft, and avoiding complacency, I think he embodies that better than anyone I've been around as a professional. And his tireless pursuit of excellence is really inspiring in a lot of ways."
