simplicity

Bill Belichick was voted coach of the year today. Obviously well deserved because for those of you who are unaware the Patriots completed their regular season undefeated, going 16-0. They finished off the season this past Saturday by defeating the New York Giants 38 – 35. At one point the Patriots were down by 12 points and managed to string together 22 unanswered points. Again one of the more impressive feats to happen in sports in recent memory. Peter King, whose had some good articles on the Patriots success has a fantastic Monday Morning Quarterback related to the game. But as I mentioned in my previous post, if the Patriots don’t finish off the post-season with a Superbowl victory, the undefeated regular season will be diminished greatly.

Ross Tucker who played for the Patriots during the 2005 and 2006 season posted an article recently on SI.com and stated exactly why and how the Patriots are so dominant. There were two interesting points he made during his article. The first was around how the coaching staff and Bill Belichick specifically coach the team:

Every coach talks about the keys to victory but they tend to do so in broad terms, like “run successfully,” “stop the run,” and “take care of the football.”

Bill Belichick specifically details what must be done for the Patriots to win. He’s more likely to say: “We can’t let Hines Ward beat us on crossing routes on third down,” or “we have to be successful running our scat screen early in the game”.

He states the keys on Monday and reinforces them every day of the week to the point where all 53 players on the roster have it ingrained in their consciousness by game day. Players realize that if they take care of these things, they win.

How can you not want to play for a coach that draws it up and details it so well? Finally he stated the other critical element besides Belichick that makes the Patriots so good and that’s Tom Brady:

During my time in New England I worked as a backup lineman and often had to snap to Brady while playing center. In spite of all of the other chaos that he had to sort through, he always found the time to look me squarely in the eye and say, “C’mon Ross, me and you, let’s get a great snap first.”

I never wanted to snap a ball so well in my life.

I was a veteran in my fifth and sixth years in the league while in New England and I had started over 20 games, but Brady’s ability to single me out and make me feel important for the success of the play was unlike anything I had experienced.

Imagine 52 other guys feeling that way every Sunday and you will begin to truly understand why Brady and the Patriots are redefining perfection.

You can’t get any better then that.