Steve Belichick wasn’t exactly ready for his first coaching job with the Patriots.
The son of head coach Bill Belichick, Steve was thrown into the fire when he began working his way up the ranks as New England’s safeties coach in 2016.
He was honest about knowing what he did not know about the position: everything.
“I remember Steve takes over,” recently retired safety Devin McCourty said on ex-Patriots teammate Chris Long’s Green Light podcast. “Now he’s walking in the room, it’s me, Pat Chung, Duron Harmon, Nate Ebner.
“So he’s walking in and we got all these veterans and he goes, ‘Yo, I’ll be honest with y’all: I don’t know what the eff I’m doing right now. My dad told me two weeks ago that I was going to have this job. And now I’m just sitting here like, what’s next?’”
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What came next was a season in which McCourty earned Second Team All-Pro and Pro Bowl honors and the Patriots rode a top-ranked defense all the way to an iconic Super Bowl win over the Falcons.
McCourty earned Second Team All-Pro and Pro Bowl honors for that 2016 season,
“So now when I look at him, I think his growth has come because of the honesty,” McCourty continued. “Not coming in saying, ‘My dad is Bill Belichick. I was born to coach. I’m going to do this.’ No, he came in and was like, ‘I’m going to learn from some veterans that I’ve got in this room, take advantage of that opportunity that I get, and I’m going to grow as a coach.’”
Bill Belichick is no stranger to giving his assistants big opportunities — see Matt Patricia and Joe Judge’s offensive failure this past season — and it seems to have worked out thus far with Steve.
Both can see if their family magic applies to Steve’s brother, Brian, who is the team’s current safeties coach.
