Football lessons that turned into life lessons from Bill Belichick

When it comes to football, there are few better people to learn from than Bill Belichick. Stories of his strategy, intensity and attention to detail echo throughout the National Football League and the Patriots locker room, and while it’s lines like, “We’re on to Cincinnati” that have been meme’d relentlessly, the sentiment behind the phrase still lands.

What’s happened has happened. We’re moving forward to the next challenge.

That idea and many others that have become a part of his personal lexicon hit hard when you’re talking about a football game, but their meaning can extend beyond than the field.

For those who have played under or worked with Coach Belichick at 1 Patriot Place, these phrases, mottos and lessons often translate to life outside of Gillette Stadium.

“A lot of times, I’ll think of ‘Bill-isms,’ things that he may say that come to mind outside of the context of football,” Ben Watson said.

From the second players arrive in Foxborough, they hear these Bill-isms, and though they may take time to resonate, they almost always do.

“I think with a lot of these, you hear them, especially as a rookie and you’re like, ‘What is that guy talking about?'” David Andrews said. “You know, obviously, he knows what he’s talking about because he’s Coach Belichick. Obviously, he’s doing something right, but you just don’t understand it as a rookie. Your second year, you kind of start understanding it, and your third year, you’re like, ‘Oh my gosh.’ Fourth year, you’re like, ‘Here we go again.’ But it’s so true.”

The first, most obvious and arguably most known is a simple one: do your job. Everyone on a team has a role. Execute that to the best of your abilities, and you will help the team succeed.

That is easy enough to understand in the realm of football. It is a foundational principle of the Patriots locker room, but in reality, people have more than one “job.”

For Watson, father and husband are among the most important of his jobs.

“He’ll say, ‘Do your job – no more, no less,'” Watson said. “As a husband, as a father, what’s my job? My job is to love my wife, love my kids, provide for them, discipline them, encourage them, all those things. That’s my job. That’s what I’m supposed to do. That’s what they should be able to expect for me to do. Nothing more, definitely nothing less.”

To do that, to help the team succeed, you have to put the needs of the group first, no matter how inconvenient it is for the individual. When Matthew Slater first came to the Patriots in 2008, that was one of the points that Coach Belichick drove home.

“When I first got here, there was a sign on the wall, and it said, ‘Mental toughness is doing what’s best for the team, even when it’s not best for you.’ I think as I am now leading a family, I think I understand that there are going to be things that I have to do that aren’t always convenient for me,” Slater said. “They might not always be the thing that I want to do, but they’re best for my family. They’re best for my wife, for my children. I think in life there’s going to be a lot of times you have to learn to put yourself second, and that’s something that I’ve heard from the day I walked in this building in regards to mental toughness and in regard to putting the team first and in regards to no one being bigger than the whole.”