FOXBOROUGH — The first thing you need to know about Bill Belichick — if you don’t already — is that he enjoys being a churl. There are other words to describe it, but we’re in more genteel and perhaps impressionable company, so “churl” will have to do.
When he gives a news conference — especially after the Patriots lose — he wears sort of a confident, defiant sneer that screams out at you, “I’m telling you nothing; you can ask the same question all day long and the answer — such as it is — won’t change.”
This is one reason why his news conference Wednesday — his first since tight end Aaron Hernandez was arrested and charged with murder — was standing room only. Any other coach ”¦ any other person ”¦ would have issued some kind of a statement by now. But Belichick went into some kind of a self-contained bunker for two days short of a month, and just emerged now to deliver his perspective.
What would he say? Or, more to the point, how would he say it? Would it have to be dragged out of him by a dogged media that vowed ”“ collectively ”“ it was not going to let him off the hook with a simple “we only talk to players that are here” mantra?
It turns out he was very eloquent. There are times when Belichick allows you to see past the churlish exterior ”¦ times when he gives you some indication that there’s a living, breathing human being with a pulse behind the almost robotic, monosyllabic grunts that pass for answers.
Wednesday, at Foxborough, was one of those times. And we should have known that. Even the world’s most accomplished jerk could have seen the seriousness of the situation. It called for some serious introspection by the man in charge ”¦ and perhaps some humility too.
And in that sense, Belichick came through. He was a little bit more his old self when the QS and As came around. But his opening statement was genuine, and it was delivered with large doses of humility and humanity.
After beginning by saying he was going to address “the situation involving Aaron Hernandez today,” he never mentioned the erstwhile tight end again.
“I thought it was important enough to do that prior to the start of camp,” he began. “It’s a sad day, really a sad day, on so many levels.”
There was no confident swagger ”¦ no defiant sneer. But there was a man who stood there, in his Patriots garb, in front of a room full of reporters who were oh-so-eager to pounce on him, and ”“ except for one or two questioners afterward ”“ disarmed them with grandiloquence.
“I sent my sympathy really to everyone who has been impacted,” he said. “A young man lost his life. His family has suffered a tragic loss, and there’s no way to understate that.”
Two weeks ago, owner Robert Kraft said he’d been duped by Hernandez. Belichick wouldn’t go there. In fact, he wouldn’t go anywhere that seemed like even a crack in a door that he and the organization would prefer to keep locked. There are legal issues to consider, and there’s always the chance that anything he says off the cuff about Hernandez could land him, and others from the organization, in court. He said he’d been advised by the team’s legal department to speak on this today ”¦ and today only.
However, he did say that “I and other members of the organization were shocked and disappointed at what we had learned. Having someone in your organization that’s involved in a murder investigation is a terrible thing.”
Belichick said that he and Kraft had always put an extreme value on having players who not only performed well on the field, but represented the organization’s values off it as well.
“This does not in any way represent the way that the New England Patriots want to do things,” he said. “As the coach of the team, I’m primarily responsible for the people that we bring into the football operations. Our players are generally highly motivated and gifted athletes. They come from very different backgrounds”¦ overall, I’m proud of the hundreds of players that have come through this program, but I’m personally disappointed and hurt in a situation like this.”
Belichick also said that the team would learn from “this terrible experience that we’ve had. We’ll become a better team from the lessons we have learned.”
Though he didn’t answer too many questions directly, he did address the issue of where the team goes from here.
“It’s time for the New England Patriots to move on and that’s what our job is,” he said “And as I said, our goal is the same: to have a winning football team, to be a pillar in the community. That’s what our direction is; that’s what we’re going to do.”
