HOUSTON — Steve Belichick is his own man, even if so many see him as a chip off the old block, with the same dry sense of humor and often unenlightening answers to media inquiries.
The big difference is Steve Belichick doesn’t need to be a head coach to find happiness right now, at 29, when happiness is being a new father to a 3¹/₂-month-old daughter Blakely Rose.
When you first sit at his table and ask him if he aspires to be a head coach one day, Bill Belichick’s safeties coach says:
“Not today. No I wouldn’t. I just want to keep doing a good job and staying happy.”
Why not?
“That’s a lot of pressure,” Steve said. “It’s a lot of responsibility, and I don’t know that you really have control of everything under you. I’d want to have control. I like having control of my little safety group. I wouldn’t be happy being a head coach today.”
Steve isn’t the only Belichick son on the Patriots’ staff. His younger brother, Brian, became a scouting assistant for the team this season.
Later on, the mask comes off Steve Belichick, and he reveals himself to be a young man who knows who he is.
“You asked me do I want to be a head coach, you didn’t specify future for present,” he said.
You said because it is too much pressure.
“Yeah, because it’s too much pressure for me right now,” he said. “I have a family that I’m trying to deal with. I’m trying to learn, I don’t have time to deal with that pressure of being a head coach. I have my own priorities that I’m dealing with.”
Maybe down the road.
“You never know what’s gonna happen tomorrow. I could wake up dead tomorrow.”
Steve Belichick let his guard down talking about fatherhood.
“It simplified life for me,” he said. “My priority list went from 100 to 5. I care about my family, I care about my job, I care about my players and I care about bettering myself and my family.
“That’s not my priority is to have a head coach title next to my name. That’s never been important to me the title next to my name. In my head, the title next to my name, and I work for the Patriots, and I’m gonna do whatever I can to help the Patriots win.”
Asked what it was like the day she was born, Steve Belichick said, “Life-changing. Without trying to sound like cliché like it was the single-most life-changing event in my life. … It was amazing. It out my whole life into perspective. It just simplified things, and I was excited.”
It was his father’s first grandchild.
“You’d have to ask him, but I think he was excited,” Steve said.
He held Blakely?
“Absolutely. It was right after the Cincinnati game, Pittsburgh week, and it happened first thing Tuesday morning [Oct. 18], so it was the player’s day off, so no meetings he had to get to right then so he was able to be with the baby. It was special.”
Did that give you joy to see the joy on his face?
“Oh my, God,” Steve said. “It absolutely did. It was a great moment I’ll never ever forget.”
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