Book Review: Patriot Reign

In Michael Holley's book, Patriot Reign, he gives a glimpse inside Bill Belichick's football machine. From managing assistant coaches, dealing with owners, and evaluating players this book provides insight into how the most successful NFL franchise in recent memory goes about their business. Most enjoyable, for me, was the inside look at how Belichick manages his players, coaches, and his responsibilities as a head coach.

"Lets put it this way: when you're the head coach you're the head coach twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. No matters what happens, it's on your watch and, to a degree, it's your problem... It doesn't matter what. Some guy can run a stop sign and get pulled over by the police, and they are calling you. If the fertilizer doesn't come and the grass is going to be brown, you might get a call, "What are we going to do?" It's everything." 


One thing that every coach can relate with is an anecdote from early in the book regarding the Drew Bledsoe/Tom Brady issue that arouse in New England during the 2001-2002 season. Drew Bledsoe was the face of the franchise and a fan favorite. To Belichick, Bledsoe's game was full of holes. Brady, on the other hand, was the ideal quarterback for his franchise. In addition to his high football IQ and skill set he was intelligent, charismatic, and put the team first.

Another thing the stood out to me was the evaluation process that every player of the team was subject to. Strengths, weaknesses, comments, anecdotes, statistics, performance, weight room numbers, attitude, and ability to be coached are just some of the areas that players were evaluated in. Each player is given scores for each category and then compared to others at his position.

Perhaps, the greatest lesson that can be taken from the book is Belichick's attention to detail in self evaluation. "They don't put their feet on tables and reflect on their greatness. They are analysts, stalking themselves for loopholes and weaknesses. When they find them, especially, in retrospect, they want to perform autopsies on the errors so they won't happen again." This is a lesson we can all learn from. I feel that a lot of times we spend a lot of time focusing on the next opponent and we fail to look back and learn from past successes and failures. It is easy look look with a critical eye when we lose a game, but looking for things to improve upon following a victory is just as important. We have to strive to constantly improve to be the best that we can be.

This book gives some great insight into managing people and a program. It would be a great read for anyone aspiring to break into the coaching profession and also for people who are looking to move up  the chain of command.