New England Patriots coach Bill Belichick isn’t an analytics guy.
While the coach is widely considered one of the best decision-makers in the NFL, largely because he’s one of the best coaches in history, he hasn’t taken to analytics. During a press conference on Friday, Belichick said analytics’ role is “less than zero” when he’s making in-game decisions.
“Analytics is not really my thing,” he said Friday during a press conference at Gillette Stadium. “I just try to evaluate what I see.”
Does he simply use his gut?
“I’m not saying it’s a gut thing,” Belichick said. “It’s an individual analysis based on the things that are pertinent to that game and that situation. I don’t really care what happened in 1973 and what those teams did or didn’t do, I don’t really think that matters in this game – or ’83 or ’90, you know, pick out whatever year you want. It’s not really my thing. And I like math, too, by the way. I really do. I like math.”
He’s clearly creating situational awareness by studying an opponent. And he draws a line as to how far back he’ll study an opponent, coach or player. But perhaps the vague term of “analytics” is too wide of a scope. Surely, Belichick has numbers on tendencies, which helps him inform his game plan, which changes from week to week.
This might be a case of Belichick being Belichick, and pretending to poo-poo modernity in the NFL, just like he’s not a fan of “SnapFace,” the made-up social media network which he repeatedly tells everyone he doesn’t use.
