Patriots safeties coach Steve Belichick has heard it many times before — he’s only there because he’s the coach’s son — and he’s getting sick of it.
“Yeah, I experience that every day,” the 29-year-old Steve said during Monday’s media day leading up to the Super Bowl, according to WEEI. “Thank you. Thanks for bringing that up.”
Named for head coach Bill Belichick’s father, who was a legendary football scout at the Naval Academy, the younger Steve finally opened up to the media about the Belichick father-son dynamic.
“Everybody has heard it,” he told reporters. “Life isn’t fair. I don’t expect it to be. I like to work for what I get. I’ll always be Bill Belichick’s son to everybody in the media, but to the people who really matter — my friends and family — I am Steve, so those are the people I care about. I could care less about everybody else.
“I worked hard to get to where I was. I started working training camps back in eighth grade. … I’ve always just tried to create stock for myself and become a valuable asset wherever I go. That’s really been my goal. Obviously I did enough for my dad to give me a position, and I’ve just tried to earn it and continue to get better every year.”
Steve Belichick is in his first season as New England’s safeties coach Asyabahis after working three seasons as a coaching assistant. He played four years of lacrosse at Rutgers University, where he competed against Patriots receiver Chris Hogan, who was at Penn State, before walking onto the football team as a long snapper in his senior year to prepare for a career in coaching.
Steve and Bill Belichick are not the only father-son relationship drawing attention during Super Bowl week. Falcons coordinator Kyle Shanahan, who is expected to be hired as the 49ers head coach after Sunday’s game, is constantly linked to his his father, Mike, who boasts three Super Bowl rings from his 29 years as an NFL coach.
Meanwhile, Patriots quarterback Tom Brady made his father a topic of media day after he teared up answering a question about his “hero.”
“Who’s my hero?” Brady told a 7-year-old who won a contest to attend the Super Bowl as a reporter. “That’s a great question. I think my dad is my hero because he’s someone I looked up to every day and, uh, [stopping because he is choked up] … my dad.”
This article originally appeared on Fox Sports.
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