You only have one chance to make a good first impression.
Devin McCourty initially was fairly confident he whiffed on this opportunity with Bill Belichick.
McCourty was among a series of Patriots players, both past and present, who shared their favorite Belichick stories for a column published to The Athletic. The three-time Super Bowl champion recalled his pre-draft meeting with New England’s head coach, who was his patented stoic self throughout the exchange.
“Mine was in college when he sat down with me, question after question, and the dude gave me no response, no anything. ‘What could you do better?’ I answered it,” McCourty told Jeff Howe. “You’re trying to impress, so I would give this long answer trying to hit everything I knew about the defense, and he would just say, ‘OK,’ and watch the next play. We did it for like 45 minutes to an hour. You can imagine going through a whole game in an hour, and you think you’re giving this coach what you think is your best stuff. My agent called me, and I’m like, ‘I don’t know how it went, but I doubt I’m a Patriot.’ Then you find out he thought it was a really good interview. To me, that’s him – consistency, getting the same thing no matter what, and I learned that as soon as I got here.”
Yup, that checks out.
Belichick is the only head coach McCourty has ever known over the course of his 10-year career. It remains to be seen if that will continue to be the case, as the 32-year-old is set to hit free agency when the new league year opens in mid-March.
