'Attention to detail is everything' to Bill Belichick

Bill Belichick is in midseason form year-round.

Ask him about an injury, he’ll refer you to the injury report. Ask him about a player’s performance, he’ll discuss the performance of an entire position group. Ask him about what he sees in a recent acquisition, he’ll tell you they’ll have to see how it goes.

But every so often, the longest-tenured head coach in the NFL expounds on topics ranging from the evolution of the West Coast offense to Snapchat.

“You might get the perception that he might not care or that he doesn’t say much to us just by what the media portrays him to be. But he cares,” New England Patriots wideout Danny Amendola said Tuesday on ESPN’s NFL Insiders. “He cares. There’s not one thing that comes in the building that doesn’t come across his desk.”

Belichick blends serious with humorous, and historical with wait-and-see. But his operation, however tightly run, is unique both to the reporters and to the players.

Everything he does has a purpose.

“He might walk by you in the hallway and not really say much, but he’ll hint you on the practice field or give you a nice compliment to let you know that he really cares,” said Amendola, who is now entering his fourth season in New England.

Belichick is now entering his 17th season as Patriots head coach and has more than four decades on his NFL resume. But while often appearing rigid, he’s remained adaptive.

And with every schematic history lesson he provides to the media, or every workout on the fields behind Gillette Stadium, it’s clear he’s as observant as ever.

“His attention to detail is everything,” Amendola added. “That’s the drills that we practice in the offseason in OTAs. They all correlate to good football, and everything that we do is predicated around winning football games. It’s no secret.”