An Evening with Bill Belichick

The Coach admits that his weekly meetings with the captains, where they "talk about things that are important for winning," is the most helpful thing that he has done here in New England. Something that he admits he did not do while he was a coach for the Cleveland Browns.

These meetings allow him and his coaches to let the captains know what the coaching staff needs from the team, but it also allows the captains to let the coaches know what the team expects from them. The captains then convey what needs to be done to the rest of the team, acting as liaisons to the coaches who are too busy to meet with every player about every problem. This is just one of the ways that the organization tries to be better prepared to do the best job possible.

A funny moment with Coach Belichick followed. When speaking about discipline, he spoke about how sometimes you need to punish the whole team instead of punishing just one player to make a larger statement. "When a player goes out there and makes a mistake, the team can suffer from that mistake. Conversely, when a player goes out there and successfully executes a play, the whole team benefits from that."

He recalled a time on the practice field, when he was a defensive coordinator with the New York Giants, and the line continued jumping offsides. He started out by talking with the team, telling them how bad it was for the team to get the offsides calls. When that didn't work, he pulled guys out separately to tell them about it. He said he'd yell at 'em, and swear at 'em, and that didn't work either. Coach Belichick finally found his solution to the problem.

"If we jumped offsides, then the whole defense would just run a lap all the way around the field. And while they were running that lap, all the guys that didn't jump offsides were letting the guy who jumped know about it. And it really helped take care of the offsides problem, not that we don't jump offside, but I'll tell ya there's not a lot of it; and whenever it happens, they're running."

This was just the first comical story that coach Belichick would share with the crowd. Next, he recalled a time during training camp, where Matt Light kept asking for a night off for the team during August practices. Belichick says that he looked at Matt like "You gotta be kiddin' me!" which garners laughter from the crowd.

He believes that training camp is the time where you need to be working everyday, in order to be ready for the late-game situations. This is where you build your stamina. He jokes with Light though, and says "You don't get something for nothing." Belichick challenged Matt Light, having him stand down field and catch a punt. If he catches it, then they get the night off; if he misses it then they will double the number of sprints they have to do that day.

"To make a long story short, there was a lot of team building that went on in that next minute or so," he said, "Troy Brown was showing him how to shield the sun from his eyes, and Kevin Faulk was teaching him about rotation. Well, Light caught it." This was met with another booming applause from the crowd, but this story wasn't over yet.

Next year, Vince Wilfork was the one who had to catch the punt. He caught it. So this past year, Wilfork was made to do it again; but this time he had to hold a football in his hand and catch the punt.

"We won 18 straight games last year," Belichick said, "but when Wilfork caught that punt, that was one of the high points of the entire season." Even pros like the New England Patriots know how to have fun.

Belichick went on to say, "When you are in charge of a group of people, like a team, first thing you do is put down some ground rules. And if they don't do it, then you immediately know that this guy is not part of the team, and that this guy is going to be a problem."

Belichick says that everyone should have the attitude that Randy Moss

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