Bill Belichick is the head coach of the NFL’s New England Patriots and is widely considered one of the greatest coaches in football history. In this article, we discuss some career facts about the legendary coach in addition to some super rarely discussed facts which we explore at the bottom of the article. So if you’re interested, just keep reading! 

10 Super Rare Bill Belichick Facts: Ancestry, Kids, Memorabilia, Donald Trump, and More!

1. Quick Summary:

• Bill Belichick is the winningest coach in NFL history with 8 Super Bowl rings (6 as HC of the #GoPats and 2 as DC of the NY Giants)

• Bill has been named Coach of the Year three times (2003, 2007 and 2010). 

• Bill Belichick was born in 1956 in Nashville, Tennessee. Her father was an assistant trainer at the United States Naval Academy and was her first teacher.

• In 1975 Bill Belichick was hired as a special assistant by the Baltimore Colts and later as an assistant coach for the Lions and Broncos.

• In 1979 he was selected as part of the NY Giants coaching staff, later becoming special teams coach and then linebackers, before being named defensive coordinator under Bill Parcells in 1985.

• In the 1980s Bill Belichick was recognized for developing one of the most dominant defenses in the NFL under HOF linebacker Lawrence Taylor. In four of his six years as DC on the Giants, his defense ranked in the top 5 in yards and points allowed.

• In 1991, he was named HC of the Cleveland Browns, however after only one winning season in 5 years, he was fired and became a defensive assistant to Bill Parcels on the Patriots (1996) and later on the Jets (1997-1999).

• After Parcels retired, Bill Belichick was named the Jets’ HC but lasted one day, only to later become the Patriots’ HC in 2000.

• In 2001 Bill Belichick started Tom Brady after an injury to Drew Bledsoe and the rest is history.

2. Who is Bill Belichick?

Bill Belichick, named after William Stephen Belichick Bill Belichick was born in Nashville, Tennessee in 1952 as the son of a lifelong coach. 

The American football head coach got his start as a coach in 1975 taking a job with the Baltimore Colts. In the future, he would go on to lead the New England Patriots of the National Football League (NFL) to six Super Bowl titles (2002, 2004, 2005, 2015, 2017, and 2019) which happens to be the most for an NFL head coach.

In the 1980s, he was the defensive coordinator for the New York Giants and was considered one of the brightest minds in the game. After a difficult stint as head coach of the Cleveland Browns in the early 1990s, the New England Patriots hired Belichick in the 2000s and within two years, he guided the franchise to six Super Bowl victories (2002, 2004, 2005, 2015, 2017, and 2019). 

3. Early life:

Widely considered one of the greatest coaches in NFL history, Bill Belichick was born William Stephen Belichick on April 16, 1952 in Nashville, Tennessee. The only son of Steve and Jeannette Belichick, Bill showed an early aptitude for football, a trait he no doubt inherited from his father, a longtime assistant coach and scout.

Belichick studies how his father dissects game film and creates plays and often accompanies him to his coaches’ meetings. In his early teens, Belichick was part of the team’s practices, and was well-versed in the game’s schemes and formations.

After graduating from Phillips Academy in Andover, Massachusetts, Belichick enrolled at Wesleyan University in Middletown, Connecticut, where he played lacrosse and earned an undergraduate degree in Economics. 

4. Childhood influences – his father: 

Belichick’s father was an assistant college football coach , primarily at the United States Naval Academy , who taught his son the intricacies of the sport from an early age. The young Belichick attended team meetings and cinema sessions and knew how to diagram complex pieces before becoming a teenager. 

Although possessing this form of precocious football intelligence, he was a limited football player who received no interest from premier league colleges and instead played center and tight end for Wesleyan University , Middletown, Connecticut till he graduated in 1975. 

After graduating, Belichick was hired as a special assistant for the Baltimore Colts which we will talk about down below. 

5. Career beginnings saw him get just $25 per week: 

After graduating from Wesleyan in 1975, Belichick got a job with the Baltimore Colts for $25 a week, serving as head coach Ted Marchibroda’s gopher. From there, Belichick met many NFL teams, including the Detroit Lions and Denver Broncos, as he tried to climb the league’s coaching ladder.

Belichick was hired in 1979 by the New York Giants to coach the team’s special teams and Belichick remained with the club for 12 seasons, before taking over as defensive coordinator under head coach Bill Parcells, who led the franchise to a pair of Super Bowl victories.

6. The tenure of the Browns and the redevelopment of the parcels: 

After the Giants’ second Super Bowl victory in 1991, Cleveland Browns owner Art Modell hired Belichick as their new head coach. Belichick’s time in Cleveland proved rocky. Demanding of his players and barely friendly to the media, Belichick struggled to win over the team’s fans and mercurial owner. After the 1995 season and Modell’s announcement that he was moving the franchise to Baltimore, Belichick was fired.

He soon found work with his former mentor, Bill Parcells, who was the head coach of the New England Patriots at the time. Both men worked in New England for the 1996 season, the same year the Patriots qualified for the Super Bowl but were defeated by the Green Bay Packers. The following year, Belichick followed Parcells to the New York Jets, where he had been hired as head coach.

7. Becoming head coach of the Patriots:

In the early 2000s, Belichick got another shot at running a franchise, when New England Patriots owner Robert Kraft named him head coach. As old Browns fans chuckled at New England’s decision to hire him, Belichick was quick to explain why Kraft wanted him. After a difficult 2000 season, the coach climbed on the arm of quarterback Tom Brady, who’d stepped in early in the year for injured Drew Bledsoe and guided the Patriots in 2001 to victory in Super Bowl XXXVI against the heavily favored St. Louis Rams.

The Patriots and Belichick repeated the run two years later, winning Super Bowl XXXVIII. The team successfully defended its title the following season by winning Super Bowl XXXIX against Terrell Owens and the Philadelphia Eagles.

Belichick was named “Coach of the Year” thrice in the years: 2003, 2007 and 2010. 

In 2007 and 2011, he again led the New England Patriots to the Super Bowl, where they both lost against Eli Manning and the New York Giants. . In the 2007 season, he became the first head coach to coach a 16-0 regular season team.

The 2014 season was more impressive for Belichick, who tied NFL coaching records as he led the franchise to its sixth Super Bowl appearance and fourth championship.

8. ‘Spygate’ and ‘Deflate’, overcoming the scandals:

It’s not all about how Belichick’s coaching career sparked off. In 2007, it emerged that for several years the Patriots had secretly filmed opposing coaches in order to learn their call signals. The incident, known as “Spygate”, resulted in a $500,000 fine for Belichick by the league. Under Bill, the Patriots were fined another $250,000 and lost a first-round pick in the 2008 NFL Draft. 

More accusations of foul play came when it was revealed that New England used underinflated soccer balls in the 2014 AFC title game, an episode that went by the moniker “Deflategate “, although Belichick denied any wrongdoing.

9. Breaking records: 

Belichick led the Patriots in 2016, to the AFC Championship, but the team lost to the Denver Broncos. The Patriots returned to Super Bowl LI in 2017 to face the Atlanta Falcons. In a thrilling game, the first to go to overtime in NFL history, quarterback Tom Brady led the Patriots to a 34-28 victory, making Belichick the first head coach to win five Super Bowl rings. and to compete in seven championships.

After losing to the Philadelphia Eagles in the big game the following year, Belichick reunited with his team in the 2019 Super Bowl. 13-3 win, giving Belichick a remarkable sixth Super Bowl win as head coach.

10. Rarest Bill Belichick facts:

Belichick is of Croatian descent:

His father, Steve Belichick (born Stephen Biličić), played for the Detroit Lions and was an assistant coach and scout for the US Naval Academy football team for 33 years. Belichick’s paternal grandparents, Ivan Biličić and Marija (Mary) Barković, emigrated from Karlovac, Croatia (from the village of Draganići) in 1897 to the United States, where they settled in Monessen, Pennsylvania.

Coaching style:

Belichick is considered an outspoken perfectionist and drills his players into a self-critical attitude, meticulous preparation and a high level of versatility. He exemplifies this attitude through intensive detailed work, which also demands a lot from his assistant coaches. Belichick’s interviews are notorious for their harshness.

Bill Belichick perfected the Erhardt-Perkins method:

Belichick has a reputation as a tactician on both offense and defense. With the Patriots, he perfected the Erhardt-Perkins offense pioneered by Ron Erhardt and Ray Perkins under Patriots head coach Chuck Fairbanks in the 1970s. It emphasizes a solid running game and a short, precise throwing “You throw to score and run to win” passing game, which is essential in the cold New England winter weather Error rate minimized. This method of Erhardt-Perkins offense outputs offensive formation and runs separately, so that a quarterback can quickly decide which runs to make based on their own offensive formation (e.g. the pro set) and the opposing defensive formation. Thus, an effective hurry-up offense can be played, since one’s own offense can force the opponent’s defense to play at a high speed. With the Patriots, he mostly drives the so-called Fairbanks-Bullough defense. If there are only three players in the line, he often uses heavy nose tackles like Vince Wilfork, Ted Washington or Keith Traylor, all of which weighed 150 kilograms and more. 

Find Bill Belichick’s memorabilia in the Pro Football Hall of Fame:

On defense, as defensive coordinator, he helped ensure the New York Giants consistently had one of the best defenses of the 1980s. His playbook, which he used to limit the Buffalo Bills’ historically fast offense in Super Bowl XXV to just 19 points and 19 minutes of possession, is on display in the Pro Football Hall of Fame.

Bill Belichick’s hot and cold relationship towards Donald Trump:

In 2021, Belichick was nominated by Donald Trump for the Presidential Medal of Freedom. However, after the storming of the Capitol in Washington in 2021, Belichick decided to forgo the award.

Bill Belichick’s relationship history:

Belichick was married to Debby Clarke, but they divorced in the summer of 2006. They split before the 2004 season, which was released by the Patriots in July 2005. Belichick was also accused of having a relationship with former Giants receptionist Sharon Shenocca, and this helped to quickly finalize their divorce.

The famous coach was seen with his girlfriend Linda Holliday in Arizona several times during the week leading up to Super Bowl XLII.

Bill Belichick’s children:

He has three children with Debby Clarke Belichick: 2 sons Stephen and Brian and a daughter named Amanda.

 Amanda graduated in 2007 from Wesleyan University, where she, like her father, played lacrosse. After college, she worked at the Connecticut Choate Rosemary Hall Prep School as a lacrosse coach and in the admissions department. In 2009, she became an assistant to the University of Massachusetts Amherst women’s lacrosse team, before joining Ohio State University in the same position the following year. After serving as acting head of women’s lacrosse at Wesleyan, she was named head of women’s lacrosse at Holy Cross College in Massachusetts in July 2015. Stephen played lacrosse and football at Rutgers University on a scholarship. Stephen was hired as an assistant coach for the New England Patriots in May 2012; as of 2016, he is the team’s safety coach. Brian attended Trinity College, where he played lacrosse. In 2016, Brian was hired to work in the Patriots’ office as a recruiting assistant.