Tom Brady reveals the 4 things that make Bill Belichick smile
Smiling is not something that Patriots coach Bill Belichick does often, at least when he’s on the sidelines or in press conferences. He’s all business.
But quarterback Tom Brady revealed Monday at a Super Bowl press conference that there are things that make the coach smile — four of them, in fact.
A reporter asked him, “Is it possible to get him to smile?”
“Just say Navy, lacrosse, Lawrence Taylor, Bon Jovi — those four,” said Brady.
Navy, or the U.S. Naval Academy, is where his father, Steve Belichick, was an assistant football coach and scout for 33 years. It’s where Belichick learned the nuances of the game, watching his father, and breaking down game film at a young age.
Lacrosse is Belichick’s favorite sport, other than football. He played the game growing up and was captain of the lacrosse team at Wesleyan University,
“It’s a great sport,” told the Baltimore Sun in 2016. “Obviously, it’s such a great part of Baltimore and Maryland tradition. Crabs and lacrosse, that’s part of the big culture there. The new people that move into the area, they pick up on it pretty quickly and enjoy it and embrace it and see the way that the game is spread throughout this country and internationally, really.
“I was fortunate enough to grow up in that area and have been able to enjoy so much of lacrosse and all that goes with it. What a great spring sport tradition it is in that area.”
Official Belichick Smile Counter: 9! 😁
📺: @nflnetwork #SBOpeningNight pic.twitter.com/0fjaNphTsG
— NFL (@NFL) January 30, 2018
He’s passed along the love of the sport to his daughter, Amanda, who is the head women’s lacrosse coach at Holy Cross University.
Taylor is the Hall of Fame linebacker Belichick coached when he was the Giants defensive coordinator under coach Bill Parcells from 1985 to 1990.
“A player like Lawrence was such a special athlete, but a really special player because of his awareness and instinctiveness,” Belichick said in September in an interview with Pro Football Talk. “Taylor had the ability, when he stood on the end of the line of scrimmage, which is where he played as an outside linebacker/defensive end, he could just tell, it didn’t matter who the person was, or what the play was, or anything else, he could just tell by the look of the opponent on the other side of the line of scrimmage who was going to block him, and that was by how scared they were.”
Then there is 2018 Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductee Jon Bon Jovi, or more specifically, the leader of the band Bon Jovi.
“He’s a great friend, been a friend for a long time all the way back into the ’80s,” Belichick told ESPN during media week at last year’s Super Bowl,
“We’ve shared a lot of great moments together, including the 1990 Super Bowl [with the Giants] in Tampa, where he was in the locker room after the game still taking crazy pictures and stuff like that; great memories from there. It was great to have Jon here, and I always appreciate his great support.”
Winning a sixth Super Bowl as head coach of the Patriots will probably get him to smile, too.
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