Belichick, Saban, and Carroll: The Meaning of a Coach
Three of the greatest ever stepped away this week. Their lasting lessons get to the heart of what it means to be a coach.
When I saw the news that Bill Belichick was leaving New England, the first thing that came to mind was the idea of teaching. We focus on so many other aspects of a coach’s job—the strategy, the management style, the handling of the press—that sometimes we overlook that the job is, at its core, that of a teacher. Belichick, Pete Carroll, and Nick Saban all left their posts this week, likely three of football’s ten best coaches of all time. They all embody, as much as anybody I can recall, that fundamental truth of the job: they were all teachers.
In episode two of Man in the Arena (streaming now on ESPN+!), Tom Brady opens by talking about his coach. Brady had just won a Super Bowl after being thrust into action following an injury to starting quarterback Drew Bledsoe. By any conventional metric, he had made it. “When I look back at that time,” Brady said, “it was really a growth stage part of my career.” He was still in incubation.
“Even today,” Brady said, “I look at some of these young players, and they’re like, ‘What do you think of this guy in his third year or fourth year?’ And in my mind, I’m thinking, ‘OK, he’s talented, but who’s going to teach him how to evolve and grow? Who’s going to assist him in his learning of what football is all about? What his knowledge is?’ I had Coach Belichick there to teach me.”
Every Tuesday, Brady and Belichick would meet, breaking down film of the opposing team’s defense. Belichick isn’t a so-called “QB-guru” like so many pundits think is necessary to developing a young quarterback. He’s a defensive wizard, and he imparted that knowledge onto Brady, explaining each position’s responsibilities so that Brady could ultimately pick them apart.
Was it Brady, or was it Belichick? That question is like asking about the chicken and the egg. Great players need great coaches to teach them how to be great.
There’s a famous clip of Pete Carroll in 2010, pulling rookie safety Earl Thomas aside during the third game of Thomas’ career. It’s Carroll’s third game with the Seahawks, too. Thomas has just blown a coverage against the San Diego Chargers, and exacerbated, he tells his coach, “I was just trying to play hard!” Carroll replies, “Yeah, you got to play—” and then he pauses, looks off for half a second. He doesn’t want to tell Thomas not to play hard, but he knows he is trying too hard. Carroll reveals everything about the craft of coaching in that half-second pause. He recenters himself, forges a new strategy, and proceeds to re-explain the defensive scheme in the simplest terms he can. When you see this, do this.
Thomas returns to the field, and he gets burned again, the same mistake made twice. On the sideline, alone, Carroll steams. “That was fucking horrible,” he says. When Thomas gets back to the sideline, though, Carroll is back in teacher mode already, quizzing him on possible situations. “What are you supposed to do?” Carroll says, and Thomas starts to get angry. He tries to walk away, but Carroll puts an arm around him. “No, no, no,” he reassures, calming down the safety. He gives Thomas one specific route to look for; otherwise, he just wants him to go out and play.
Thomas gets back on the field, and this time…interception. At the end of the game, the Chargers are driving on their own 20. Quarterback Philip Rivers drops back and...interception again from, who else, but Earl Thomas? Carroll gives him a hug on the sideline. “Great play!” he says, because that’s all that’s left to say at that point. Thomas, of course, would go on to become a 7-time Pro Bowler. He had a knack for seemingly always being in the right spot at the right time.
And then there’s Nick Saban. He has his sayings like “the process” (you have to stick to it), and “rat poison” (you have to stay away from it), and “a’ight” (every other word out of his mouth), but you can go back to the beginnings of his time at Alabama, to moments after his first signature win, and see the foundation that made him special. Every time he took the podium for a press conference, Saban knew that his real audience wasn’t the press but his own players who would watch the clip on SportsCenter, or the parents who would see it and want their sons to come play for his program.
In the opening game of Saban’s second season, coming off of a 7-6 record, the Tide faced a No. 9 Clemson squad that had its sights on the National Championship. The Tide were heavy underdogs and a total afterthought, but on national TV, they pulverized the Tigers, 34-10.
Immediately, the win was viewed as a turning point (it certainly was for Clemson, who fired head coach Terry Bowden shortly thereafter and replaced him with an interim coordinator named Dabo Swinney), and at the press conference, a reporter started to ask Saban about how he had turned around his program’s momentum. Saban wouldn’t even let the reporter finish speaking (he wouldn’t eat the rat poison). “Well, it’s one game,” he said, using basic coach-speak. But then his answer opened up even more, giving a glimpse at a personal philosophy. “We made a B on the midterm,” he said. “So we’re gonna take a week off and get a D, and have a C average? Or are we gonna get an A?”
A reporter asked Saban a question, and instead, the coach turned his answer into a lecture, speaking directly to his players in terms they would understand. In Man in the Arena, Rodney Harrison told us, “Tom was very blessed, because he had structure for his career. And that’s what Coach Belichick gives you.”
You could sub in the names “Coach Carroll” or “Coach Saban,” and the same statement could be said for hundreds of guys. Just what type of impact has their coaching had on others? Here’s a stunning stat: Nick Saban’s players from Alabama have gone on to make $2.27 billion in the NFL. $2.27 billion.
It’s easy to look back on these three careers and be overwhelmed by the enormity of what they each accomplished, at the ways they changed their sport. They didn’t do so overnight or with any special superpower, though. It all came back to one simple tenant. “Teaching,” Nick Saban once said, “is the ability to inspire learning.”
That’s what Saban, Belichick, and Carroll did. They taught. They taught hundreds of men hundreds of lessons, constantly pushing for more, adding just one more layer of complexity at a time. They inspired players to learn. They led them to win.
📰 If you want to read more about these great coaches, carve out some time this weekend for J.R. Moehringer’s legendary Pete Carroll profile, Kevin Van Valkenburg’s look at Nick Saban, and Jenny Vrentas on Bill Belichick and Saban’s friendship.
🌟 Why did Michael Penix, Jr. always stick his head into the sideline cart? The story, from Molly McGrath, has to do with glowsticks.
⚽ West Brom striker Daryl Dike (an American!) has missed over a year due to injuries. Look what happened in his first game back.
🇺🇬 For the first time ever, Uganda qualified for the T20 Cricket World Cup. Take a look at the team’s celebration to see just how joyful the victory is.
🦘 Get ready for the Australian Open (starting this Sunday!) with previews for the men’s and women’s draws from the indomitable Jon Wertheim.
