Bill Belichick is a well-known football historian, so it’s no surprise that he is well-versed in the coaching history of the NFL.
During a recent conversation with The 33rd Team, Belichick was asked which coach in NFL history he would most like to match wits against. The longtime New England Patriots head coach turned the tables on Mike Tannenbaum, who posed the question, instead naming which coach he would most want to work with.
“Put Paul Brown at the top of the list,” Belichick said. “I would have loved to have done that.”
Belichick said he spent some time around the legendary Cleveland Browns and Cincinnati Bengals head coach when he was a teenager and attended Brown’s summer camps, but wishes he could have had the opportunity to be on the same staff as the three-time NFL champion.
“I think he really took the West Coast offense, and it was so far ahead of its time with the West Coast principles that Bill Walsh took and turned it into the West Coast offense,” Belichick said. “But, you know, Coach Brown also was so innovative in so many other ways, whether it was the play-calling, whether it was the cab squad, the screen and draw plays that evidently he kind of stumbled into. But that was kind of the creative way that he worked was to see things and figure out how it would disrupt the defense. I know Coach (Tom) Landry was like that, too.”
Belichick also mentioned George Halas, Vince Lombardi and Al Davis as all-time greats he wishes he could have coached with.
Brown went 222-112-9 as a professional head coach, winning three NFL titles. His proteges include Walsh, Chuck Noll, Weeb Ewbank and Don Shula.