PHOENIX - Stern, stoic, short on conversation, keen on detail, a meticulous notetaker, and a classic multitasker, a man able to, wait a second . . . break down game film while getting in his daily workout on the treadmill?
"That part really impressed me," said Chris Landry, reflecting on the two years he was a scout on Bill Belichick's staff in Cleveland. "I mean, OK, break down film, sure, I can do that . . . but not while I'm running on the treadmill."
Who is Bill Belichick, the one so few of us see? In some ways, according to those who have spent time around the highly successful Patriots coach, he is precisely the guy in those oft-painful press conferences, when he says little, smiles less, and reveals next to nothing about his team, his thought process, or himself. That's the Bill Belichick who looks as if he followed his morning swig of cod liver oil with a Listerine chaser.
But in other ways, the real Bill Belichick reflects nothing of the tight-mouthed, sweatshirt-tattered, dour curmudgeon seen standing at the podium or along the sideline.
According to Kirk Ferentz, coach of the Iowa Hawkeyes the last nine seasons, the 55-year-old Belichick is not only "warm and genuine," he is also a "great conversationalist." To top that - gentlemen, you might ask your spouses to leave the room right now - Ferentz adds that his old boss "might be the best listener I have ever been around."
Not that Ferentz figured that out the first time he interviewed with Belichick, when the former University of Connecticut standout was fresh off coaching three losing seasons at the University of Maine and Belichick was entering a third year of coaching the Browns. Belichick was in need of an offensive line coach and, by Ferentz's count, he was Belichick's 12th or 13th choice for the spot.
"Truth is, I don't know how he got my name," said Ferentz, reached by telephone early last week. "He never told me, and I never asked. But knowing him as I do now, I'd bet he asked someone for names, got mine with a bunch of others, filed it away on one of his cards, and a couple of years later when he had the opening, he pulled out his cards and called me."
The day he arrived for his first interview in Cleveland, Ferentz recalled, Belichick was forced to delay their afternoon meeting to attend a funeral. When they finally met up in the evening, Belichick conducted what Ferentz today describes as "an interrogation," one that had Ferentz back on his heels like some stumbling free safety.