By R.L. Bynum
CHAPEL HILL — Bill Belichick is known for often giving short answers, but expounding on certain subjects that aren’t directly team-related expansively.
That was the case during Thursday’s press conference at the Kenan Football Center when he talked about changing schemes to stop star players in sports, using examples that spanned football, basketball and beyond.
The question centered on whether Belichick would lean more heavily on scheme changes this season with a roster that has had more time in the program.
Belichick explained that the approach depends entirely on circumstance rather than a fixed philosophy.
“I think it just depends on whether that’s something that we want to do. I think if you talk to anybody who competed against us at the [New York] Giants, they would tell you that we basically ran one defense and we had two changeups,” Belichick said. “It couldn’t be much simpler than what we did at the Giants, and we had a lot of success there. If I had to do it over again, I wouldn’t change much.”
He pointed to other stops in his career where the opposite was true, where multiple looks were necessary depending on the opponent.
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“There were times at Cleveland with Coach [Nick] Saban, for example, or New England in some of the playoff games where we would go from one defense to kind of a different 3-4/4-3 or a man defense or zone defense based on who we were playing, and those teams were very comfortable and flexible in making those kind of adjustments, and it worked out well.
“We did have some of that at the Giants too, even in the Super Bowl against Buffalo,” Belichick said. “That was kind of a new defense for us. And two weeks before that, we played the [Chicago] Bears and ran a four-three, which one time the Giants actually ran a four-three.”
Belichick said the decision ultimately comes down to what the offense presents and what a defense needs to do to disrupt it.
“It depends on what the offense does, what your choices are on defense. What you need to do is stop them,” he said. “Playing one defense, playing it really well, can be a good option, or changing things up and giving the offense different looks can be another option.
“I wouldn’t suggest playing the same defense against Peyton Manning 50 times a game, which we did at the Giants several times,” he said. “The same call 50 times in one game, but I don’t think that’s a good way to play Peyton Manning as an example. Unless you want to hear Manning play and see the scoreboard light up, then that would make all those fans happy.”
He extended the point to practice settings as well, using Tom Brady as an example of an opponent who could exploit repetition.
“Same thing for in training camp against Brady, you play the same defense, all you’re asking for is just to get sliced up,” Belichick said. “Against some players like that, in that type of offense, you really got to keep it moving. It just depends.”
From there, Belichick shifted into a broader reflection on what separates the era’s most dominant players, the ones who face a defense’s full attention on a weekly basis. He mentioned Michael Jordan, Lawrence Taylor, Brady, Emmitt Smith and Jim Brown.
“You go into every game, and that’s the guy that the other team’s talking about,” he said. “This is the guy we’ve got to stop.”
He remembered how opposing teams dealt with UNC and Giants great Taylor.
“He’s been double-teamed every way, and in some cases, triple-teamed every way you could do it. Put a tight end in front of him, slide the line to him, chip him with the back, use play action at him to slow him down. He saw everything and continued to be a productive and great player every week.”
Belichick credited coaching staffs, including his own, for finding creative ways to keep such players effective despite the extra attention.
“We found ways to put him in different positions and all that. I think that’s a coach’s job, is to give the players a chance to be productive,” Belichick said. “If you don’t give a chance to be productive, it’s hard for them to produce.
“[Taylor] saw every double team there was. Brady saw every blitz that there was. He saw every coverage that there was. Whether Jim Brown or Michael Jordan, I mean, you think they were looking to slide the defense to Jordan to double him and force the ball out of his hands, but that’s what makes those players great.”
Belichick mentioned LeBron James and Kobe Bryant as players who continued to produce despite getting extra attention.
He recalled a specific moment from his time in New England, when Bryant addressed the team and spoke candidly about how his game had to evolve as he aged.
“When we brought Kobe in to talk to our team in New England, that was one of the greatest messages that he gave was that, ‘I can still score, but I couldn’t score like I scored when I was in my early 20s. I couldn’t just get the ball and drive by anybody. I had to find ways to move without the ball. I had to find ways to create shots for myself that I didn’t do when I was in my 20s. So I just had to fall back and try to go faster. Nobody could stop me at first.’ He had to change his game.”
Belichick said that same evolution applied to some of the greatest players he coached directly.
“I think that was a great lesson for Brady, Taylor, guys like that, that as you watch them evolve through their career, they found ways to continue to be very, very productive, but maybe it wasn’t quite the same thing they did the first four or five years of their career,” Belichick said.
Cool, I guess. Did BB happen to mention any generational talents that he or his staff have actually recruited or any opponents in, you know, the actual upcoming season that his defense is actually preparing for? Or was just an old guy retelling past glory and reminding everyone of the players that are responsible for almost all the W’s in his career (the others mentioned are not a surprise, but Kobe because he came and talked to the Pats once about aging?)