Belichick and Paul Brown

[oldschooler]

BELICHICK AND P.B.: One of Patriots head coach Bill Belichick's favorite topics is the influence of Bengals founder Paul Brown and during his media session here Tuesday he lit it up. The week of the Pats' 2004 win over the Bengals in Foxboro, Bengals regaled the Cincinnati media with facts and figures on Brown's life.

The connection begins with Belichick's godfather, Bill Edwards, a former P.B. player who also coached for him. When Brown came to run the Bengals, Belichick and his father, Navy assistant coach Steve Belichick made the trip to Wilmington College to visit training camp .

Then when Belichick became coach of the Browns in 1991, the year Brown died, he became good friends with Brown's Hall of Fame running back Jim Brown , a guy often at odds with the coach. But there was also apparently a lot of respect there.

"Jim and I talked a lot about Paul and his relationship with Paul and how Paul ran the team," Belichick said Tuesday. "It was remarkable to me how similar things were at that point in the '90s and things haven't really changed that much 15 years later from the '90s structurally. I'm talking about game plans and scouting reports and practice schedules all those kinds of things relative to the way Paul did them after the war.

"Film exchange and things like that, they weren't going on back then. I'm sure Paul took a lot of that information, developed the system that he did which is really the foundation of the West Coast offense," Belichick said. "The West Coast offense is really the Ohio River offense. It's Paul and what he did in Cleveland and what he did in Cincinnati. That's the grandfather of all the West Coast teams. I think his influence in the coaching ranks from a coaching schedule and how to coach and all of that, he truly wrote the book on it. And Bill Walsh's book is really a follow-up on what Paul did. I'm sure a lot of what Bill learned was from what Paul did and it still applies today."





http://www.bengals.com/news/article-1/Notes-LB-news-Palmer-says-Saints-played-by-rules-Belichick-and-PB/ab0a5cb2-9695-4a74-a855-ec88e7ebd12d

[oldschooler]

[b] [size=6]Bill Belichick: Legendary Cincinnati Bengals coach Paul Brown paved way[/size][/b]

[b] [size=6]Coach recounts Brown's profound influence on him, the West Coast offense, game in general[/size][/b]


One of the subplots leading into Super Bowl XLVI a couple months ago was about Bill Belichick and Tom Coughlin being former Bill Parcells assistants and how Parcells impacted them.

During last Tuesday’s AFC Coaches Breakfast at the NFL Annual Meetings, Belichick talked at length though about the impact Paul Brown had on him and said that while a lot of it is indirect, the influences are very strong.

While Belichick can be terse, the one area where he is most relaxed is discussing the game’s history and impact through the generations.

Belichick’s godfather, Bill Edwards, played and coached with Brown. Edwards later coached with Belichick’s father, Steve. As a youngster, Belichick attended Browns camps at Hiram College and later when the Bengals trained at Wilmington.

When Belichick was coaching the Browns, he would often talk with Jim Brown about how Paul Brown ran things.

Said Belichick: “It was remarkable to me how similar things were at that point in the ’90s and things haven't really changed that much 15 years later from the ‘90s structurally – I'm talking about game plans and scouting reports and practice schedules all those kinds of things relative to the way Paul did 'em after the war. I'm sure that during World War II that was a time when all the college coaches got to interact and intersectional coaches got to spend time with each other and get ideas from other things that were going on.”

Belichick went on to say that Brown took a lot of information and developed the system that was the foundation of the West Coast offense, or as he called it “the Ohio River offense.”

“It's Paul and what he did in Cleveland and what he did in Cincinnati. That's the grandfather of all the West Coast teams,” Belichick said.




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