Image courtesy of Denver Broncos/ESPN
As the Patriots prepare to play in Denver on Christmas Eve, many fans may not know that Bill Belichick was actually on the Broncos staff early in his career.
Four years into his now 48-year NFL coaching career, Belichick was an assistant special teams coach and a defensive assistant for the 1978 Denver team that went 10-6 under head coach Red Miller before losing to Pittsburgh in the AFC Divisional playoffs.
On Friday, I asked Belichick about his brief stint in Denver and if anything he learned about football or the Broncos’ organization at Mile High stood out or still pertains to today.
Needless to say, he was more than willing to reminisce a bit.
Yeah, it was a great year for me. It was a great experience,” he said. “The two years before that, I was in Detroit – coached the tight ends and receivers in Detroit. And then, in Denver, I went back to working on the special teams – worked on special teams in Detroit, too – but worked more on special teams and the defensive side of the ball in Denver. And, that was with Joe Collier and Richie McCabe, so it was Stan Jones, Bob Zeman, Richie McCabe and Joe Collier. And then, I did the breakdowns and stuff like that. So, I learned a ton out there. It was a graduate course from Joe, from Richie about the secondary play, and just in general the 3-4 defense. And then, we played a over defense. It was like a version of a 3-4 Detroit, but it was a little bit different. Joe played the 3-4 defense that he played in Denver, which was –the spacing was the same, but it was configured a lot differently than what we eventually ran in the Giants when Coach [Bill] Parcells came. So, Baltimore was all 4-3. Detroit was a different version of odd spacing, 3-4 defense in Denver. Then, we played 4-3 for a couple years with Ralph Hawkins in New York. And then when Coach Parcells came, it was all 3-4, but it was a different type of 3-4 defense than what Joe ran in Denver, even though the spacing was the same. And that was – looking back on it – again that was a great learning experience, because I saw kind of the same thing, but they were actually very different in the way they were coached and the way they were – the schematics of it. And, of course, that changed some of the fundamentals too. The red area coverages that Joe ran out there, I’d say at that time, he was pretty far ahead of his time. They’re pretty common now, but at that time they were pretty unique for the most part. So, that was a great experience.
“I really didn’t have too much interaction on the offensive side of the ball, other than – I was there, but I wasn’t in those meetings, and that type of thing. We lost in the playoffs there, but had a good team the year before – they had gone to the Super Bowl, beat Oakland three times. So, coming off of that year, coming off the 77’ season, they lost to Dallas in the Super Bowl. So, a lot of good players, a lot of really good players out there, and a lot of good coaches, a lot of good experience that I gained. Babe Parilli, who was quarterback coach – they had [Craig] Morton – I learned a lot from Babe, too, because I spent a lot of time with Babe. He kind of mentored me from the opposite side of the ball. I mean, I asked him a lot of questions and bothered him a lot, but he couldn’t have been more accommodating, from just the quarterback coaching perspective, because that’s something I hadn’t done.
“So, I learned a lot out there that year.”