A Football Life

Some love him, many hate him, but all football fans should appreciate Bill Belichick. He's an incredible football coach. He may be a little pissy with the media but who can blame him for that. Most in the media are ridiculous. I can barely stomach press conferences and I don't even have to answer the idiotic questions. Belichick is simply amazing. I've never seen a coach make such extreme scheme adjustments from week to week. It's near impossible to game plan for him because you never know what you'll get. As the game chages, he changes. At times he is even the catalyst for those changes. His teams today are so very different from his teams a decade ago. It certainly helps that his quarterback is the same, but even Tom Brady's game is far from the careful game manager that shocked the Rams in the Super Bowl.

NFL Network's "A Football Life" profiling Bill Belichick's 2009 season is excellent. The coach, unknown to his team, wore a microphone the entire season. It's a great glimpse of Belichick. It's a fantastic glimpse of coaching in the NFL. If nothing else, it shows that Bill Belichick is indeed human. The Flea Flicker says "check it out", it's being replayed frequently over the next week.

A new episode is on this week profiling the late Reggie White and Jerome Brown. Both were tragically lost far too soon. Brown died in a car accident at the age of 27, after his fifth NFL season. Very sad. With the Philadelphia Eagles, White and Brown formed half of one of the great defensive lines in history. I was never a fan of their domination, but I was a fan of their tremendous football skills. If Brown hadn't died in that car accident, I always wondered if White would have remained with the Eagles. They were an incredible tandem, and maybe it was too difficult when it was broken. White played only one more season in Philadelphia after Brown's death. I know that I would've much preferred that White never played a game for the Green Bay Packers. My most vivid memory of Reggie White playing football is a play in which Minnesota Vikings receiver Cris Carter is foolishly assigned to block the Packer defensive end. I'd never before seen a man fly. I look forward to the football life of Jerome Brown and Reggie White.