Ahead of the start of the National Football League season on Thursday, New England Patriots head coach Bill Belichick participates in a press conference with members of the media to discuss the team’s upcoming game against the Philadelphia Eagles and the season at large. Throughout his 24 years as the team’s head coach, he has not been known for his verbosity, frequently answering questions with succinct, blunt statements. If reporters do not come prepared with insightful inquiries, Belichick does not waste his time and has cut off press conferences on numerous occasions.
While Belichick tries to keep his mindset on the game, The Boston Globe reporter Ben Volin decided to ask the coach a question pertaining to roster construction back in Sept. 2021, prefacing it disclosing that he had been thinking about it lately and was curious for his opinion. The query related to why teams often utilize a roster spot for a designated long snapper rather than cross-training another player to perform a task with negligible difficulty. The video recently resurfaced on X, formerly known as Twitter, highlighting the perspicacity of the head coach.
“This is the kind of question that Bill Belichick loves and will go into detail,” Boomer Esiason said Thursday morning on WFAN after being challenged to guess how long his answer would be. “I believe he’ll go into detail and he will tell Ben Volin why it is so important to have a long snapper that makes your special teams special.”
Esiason eventually settled on the answer being three minutes long, and then discovered from co-host Gregg Giannotti that the elongated, comprehensive response ended up spanning nine minutes worth of time. It was a duration he was surprised to hear, but understood why the eight-time Super Bowl championship-winning head coach gave such an elaborate answer.
“This is in the in-depth, deep into the weeds conversation, and this is the kind of crap he loves,” Esiason said. “It’s probably why Ben actually asked it.”
The WFAN host remembers hearing a story from his colleague on CBS Sports’ The NFL Today, Phil Simms, about how Belichick approaches his interactions with media members. Essentially, Simms imparted to him that if the coach saw that the reporter was not ready, nor erudite about the game of football, he would forsake them in the middle of their interview. Esiason then made a suggestion to reporters listening to the show about another question that he feels could elicit a protracted response.
“You should ask him the value of a multi-dimensional tight end and why it’s so important to have one that can block and catch together,” Esiason said.
“I don’t even think he’d give you nine minutes on that,” Giannotti replied.
