This just in: the hated NFL Patriots once again made the NFL’s better-talented teams look like they forgot their vitamins and then sent them to the doghouse. Seven hundred coaches not named Belichick, McDaniels or Scarnecchia are munching kibble and binging on 2018 game film.
They’re trying to decode Coach Bill Belichick and QB Tom Brady’s method. In September, after serving a mandatory seven months in the Dog Pound, they and 1,600 of the world’s toughest athletes will take the field. But high hopes may drop like old elevators when they face Belichick, Bradyand those upside-down, zip-superstars-you-can’t-beat-us-but-we’re-still-here-Patriots.
With higher draft picks and better players, 31 teams will try to stop a head coach (fired by the bottom-drawer Browns) who uses alien technology to rule the ‘verse. His poster kid? An unwanted 41-year old senior citizen QB with a boyish voice. Tom Brady was rated as slow, weak, breakable and un-athletic whose poor abilities and footwork would be exposed by pressure. He couldn’t throw a spiral, had the build of a ping pong player and was skinny.
He dropped to the 199th pick in the 6th round. Now for 19 seasons, he’s been tougher than a rodeo cowboy and executes under pressure with the panic that Batman exhibits while reading an old novel. Brady’s quick, strong and smart in the pocket. He throws into tight windows, grinds like a grinder and is as hard to beat as Indiana Jones. He’s taken 1,000 mind-warping hits and gets up like he’s going to re-fill the puppy’s water bowl. He’s #1 in Super Bowls, SB MVPs, SB wins, playoff TD’s and yards, ya-da-ya-da. By his choice, he’s 15th in QB pay. (More on this next time). He wins at table tennis, no doubt takes out the garbage and writes haiku for his kids.
There’s his go-to receiver, Julian Edelman, a small Bam-Bam Jetson guy who went 232nd in the draft and was penciled in as a training camp blocking dummy or a camp arm to toss a ball at practice. (Yo – who’s the dummy now?)
He missed the standard for top receivers: 6-5, 225, fleet as Mercury, meat hook hands, rich as Midas, younger than springtime and bigger than Skaar, son of Hulk. JV-sized Edelman is virtually invisible at 5-10 in boots, is a buck-ninety-five dripping wet, owns so-so speed and at 32 racks up 160 receiver years. A famous superstar receiver’s mediagenic handle: Megatron. Edelman’s is Squirrel. He’s the best receiver in the game and is the Super Bowl MVP.
Over the years, Belichick had 20 All-Pro players with gargantuan arms, greater height, better tattoos, F-22 Raptor speed and championship laurels. But if they busted the team’s operating principles and locker room unity by sporting Godzilla egos, beating women, skipping practice, thinking they’re better than others, or demanding more money, Belichick dumped them. Despite cutting elite physical specimens, Belichick and Brady own the record for Super Bowl and Championship wins, and forged and now own the athletic gold standard for sustained success.
Besides dismissing non-team players, how do they do it? How do forgettable people without top credentials become courageous performers?
It’s not an Area 51 secret. Belichick, Brady, Edelman, and many others in the Patriots organization have explained how they do it. The Patriots own a radical thematic method and haven’t varied the pitch. They’ve kept true to a basic set of operating principles that amount to what we can call life values.
Why haven’t 700 of the best coaches in football figured it out? Might it be something about them, and us? Do we get the feeling that the hated Pats’ winning principles might extend beyond football? If they do, and they’d help us live better, can we learn them, too?
Check in next time for the answers. J Photo credit: http://www.nepatriotsdraft.com/2012/02/2012-nfl-combine-what-to-watch-for.html
