If there's one fatal flaw that spans across all offshoots of the Bill Belichick coaching tree, it's that they're overinvolved.
Whether it's Scott Pioli bugging his coach's phones in Kansas City, or the way Josh McDaniels isolated the biggest stars on the Broncos roster, the micromanaging style just doesn't work in a league with so many idiosyncrasies.
Some point to Belichick as the root of this style of coaching and managing, that his ability to impact every single facet of the Patriots organization is a skill to strive for as a young coach. "Do your job" is a saying that Belichick espouses, and he knows what he expects because he knows every single job description.
While the Patriots head coach and general manager does have his finger on the pulse of the franchise, that doesn't mean that he's the heartbeat.
Belichick sat down with Duke basketball coach Mike Krzyzewski to discuss how his management style has shifted over the years.
"I think really, Mike, nobody has done it better than you have. Having good people around you, having good assistants; our coordinators Coach [Josh] McDaniels and Coach [Matt] Patricia, Scott O'Brien on special teams, Nick Caserio, who runs our personnel department, those guys really do a great job," Belichick said. "They know what we want; we talk about it. Of course the game evolves a little bit from year to year, your team changes from year to year, but we kind of put together what we feel like gives us the best opportunity to work towards that end.
"I try to manage that and not screw it up, but those guys do a great job of pulling it together and we've been together for a long time and that continuity has really enabled me, given me confidence to give them more decision-making ability, more responsibility, and that's probably benefited the overall organization quite a bit."
"I'm not caught up as much in some of the details or micromanaging, maybe, that I did earlier in my career," Belichick said. "I have people that can probably do that a lot better than I can anyway, and I turn that over to them and they've done a great job with it. So it's definitely an evolution and, of course, the game is changing all the time. I mean, five years ago in the NFL we weren't even talking about read-options and reading defensive ends and stuff like that. We were reading safeties. You've got to be able to progress along with the schemes and the players that you're working with as well, so that's been a big part of it, too."
It's the trust that Belichick has built up in his lieutenants, a byproduct of homegrowing his coaches, that allows him to watch over every aspect of the team. He trusts that his coaches will do their job, and that they will have the players do their job, while Caserio and the personnel department will do their job in finding more players who are able to do their job.
If there's a skill that future coaches nad managers should know after splitting from Belichick's watch, it might not be anything football related; Belichick would be the first to acknowledge that there are many ways to be successful on the football field.
Perhaps the most important reason for Belichick's success has been his ability to delegate responsibilities after building the trust. His management ability should not be overlooked when evaluating Belichick's football acumen.
Belichick knows his own job and is able to do it better than anyone else. All he expects is for his colleagues to do their job, too.