HEMPSTEAD, N.Y. -- Long before his fateful stint as a Cleveland Browns intern, Eric Mangini's ethos -- diligence, teamwork, sacrifice for the greater good -- was forged. It happened in the basement of the Connecticut home he grew up in.
When the Mangini brothers, Eric, Kyle, and Scott, got into a spat, their father, Carmine, would send them to the cluttered confines of the cellar for a life lesson that sticks with the New York Jets coach to this day.
"We'd be sent down to the cellar to clean it up and we couldn't come up until it was done," said Mangini. "We'd spend the first half-hour fighting, 'You get that side and I'll get that side.' Then we'd say, 'Let's just get this done and get out of here.' You came up feeling good about each other because you had worked together."
Carmine died when Mangini was 16. He suffered a heart attack playing racquetball with his son, Kyle. Various paternal figures emerged in Mangini's life to fill the void: his football coach at Bulkeley High, Graham Martin; his Uncle Frank; and when he was a 23-year-old public relations intern and ball boy for the Cleveland Browns, he found another father figure in a fellow Wesleyan University alumnus -- Bill Belichick.
"I think any time you have a mentor, there are elements of that," said Mangini, who spent 10 seasons coaching with Belichick in Cleveland (1995), with the Jets (1997-99), and in New England (2000-05), where he was defensive coordinator his final season.
The pseudo father-son dynamic explains why so much of Belichick's approach is reflected in Mangini's coaching style -- his secrecy about injuries, his painstaking attention to detail, his unwillingness to tolerate mental mistakes or selfish actions, his fondness for drab coaching attire.
But Mangini yearned to prove he could take the lessons he learned and apply them on his own. He did so by going against Belichick's wishes and advice by taking the Jets job last January, two days before his 35th birthday.
In the process, Mangini has proved he is his own man, not a Belichick clone.
"Whenever you have someone that has been an extreme influence on you, you take things good and bad from that person," said Mangini. "To me, it's important to approach things the way that I believe they should be done and learn from Bill Parcells, Bill Belichick, Ted Marchibroda, Charlie Weis, Romeo Crennel, Kirk Ferentz, Nick Saban."