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Legendary New England Patriots head coach Bill Belichick can be grumpy at the best of times, but bring up the subject of analytics and it's sure to bring out a terse response.
The six-time Super Bowl-winning mastermind once again shared his viewpoint on analytics in the NFL while speaking on Tuesday at the GM and QB summit.
“I’d prefer good players, good fundamentals and good execution,” Belichick told D. Orlando Ledbetter of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
Belichick has repeatedly said he doesn't use analytics
The 69-year-old defensive guru has a long history of publicly dismissing analytics in the NFL.
“I’ve never looked at one,” Belichick said in 2019 regarding analytics websites. “I don’t even care to look at one. I don’t care what they say.”
Even way back in 2016, the Patriots head coach was dismissive of the trend.
“You could take those advanced websites and metric them wherever you want,” Belichick said in 2016. “I don’t know. I have no idea. I’ve never looked at one. I don’t even care to look at one. I don’t care what they say. . . . . All the metric pages and all of that, I mean I have no idea. You’d need to ask that to a smarter coach than me.”
Bill Belichick’s coaching record speaks for itself
So why doesn’t the veteran coach use analytics? And why is he so dismissive of them?
The obvious answer is that he has never needed them to win.
Belichick has an outstanding 311-148 coaching record in the NFL. He has won six Super Bowls as head coach in New England and a further two as defensive coordinator with the New York Giants in the 80s.
He has the most playoff wins as a head coach in NFL history with 31 and the most Super Bowl appearances at nine.
What is Bill Belichick's secret to success?
When you delve a little deeper into the process in New England, the answer is rather straight-forward and a little boring. It’s all about “preparation.”
Bill Belichick's former long-time research director, Ernie Adams, explained the process in New England during the NFL Films documentary Do Your Job back in 2015.
“You’re going to win or lose games in practice,” he said. “I mean, there is no such thing as being a game-day player. You see situations come up on the practice field; you’ve worked on it; you know what it takes. When it comes up in a game, because you’re trained, you’re seasoned, you’ve seen it, you react to make the play.”
Adams went on to explain how Belichick has always done things differently since the start of his career in the 1970s.
“We have ways we do things. That’s just the way it is,” Adams said in the documentary. “To be honest, we get players from other teams and they say, ‘Coach this is totally different than anything else we’ve ever been around.’ Well, I’ve been with Bill since 1979 at the Giants; this is the only way I know. ... We have ways we do it, and that’s really the only way we know.”
It's unlikely that Bill Belichick will change his mind when it comes to analytics in the NFL this late in his Hall of Fame coaching career. The Patriots HC has always done things his way. If it ain't broke...
