FOXBORO, Mass. — Bill Belichick wasn’t as interested in talking about the Oakland Raiders or his New England Patriots as he was in discussing the Annapolis T-Birds on Wednesday morning.
Belichick held an unusually long (26 minutes) and jovial press conference as the Patriots prepare for their Week 3 matchup against the Raiders. Belichick went back nearly 50 years while discussing unbalanced blocking schemes, which led him into talking about the single-wing offense.
“In a way, I really feel lucky because the one year, in eighth grade, I played for the T-Birds in Annapolis. It was the Ford dealership. I think it was 110-pound football and so we were the T-Birds, and so our coach played college football at Clemson, so we ran the single-wing,” Belichick said at Gillette Stadium. “That was our offense. Whatever year that would have been, call it ’62, somewhere in there, ’63, whatever it was. So, for a whole year, I got to experience what a single-wing offense was.
“It was pretty interesting, just being a lineman, which that was the game really, was the blocking play, the blocking patterns and the calls. That’s kind of all he knew, was to run the single-wing. So we ran the single-wing. Really looking back on it, it was a great experience I never would have gotten otherwise just because it was kind of going out of, hardly anybody was running it. Lawrenceville ran it, and when I played at Andover in 1971, Coach (Ken) Keuffel down there, I think he might have been the last one to run the single-wing because he ran it all the way through his career at Lawrenceville. So we actually played against it when I was in high school.
“The principles and the elements of it are interesting. I’m glad I got to experience it. I got to experience the wing-T in high school, the single-wing in Pop Warner football, the wishbone in college and my exposure to all the NFL stuff since ’75. I feel very fortunate to have the opportunity to at least experience those systems in addition to the college stuff and all that Navy did and I did with my dad and so forth.
“Other than UCLA, Tennessee, they were kind of the last, if I remember right, Clemson, were some of the last teams that hung with the single-wing, but then by that time, it had all gone to wing-T, which was another interesting transition because all those single-wing teams in the ’50s had to make a decision when they went to the T-formation what they were going to do with the tailback, which when all those guys came into the NFL, was the decision the NFL had to make with them. Paul Hornung, you put him at running back. Johnny Unitas, you put him at quarterback. Bill Wade, you put him at quarterback. You had single-wing tailbacks that ended up becoming halfbacks in the NFL or they became quarterbacks in the NFL because that was their combination job in the single-wing offense.
“Of course, nothing was more important than punting, so the great single-wing tailbacks like Sammy Baugh, punting was really such a big part of it then that your single-wing tailback had to be a good punter. Then he had to be able to run, and the third thing was to be able to throw. When those guys came into the NFL, the NFL had to make a decision as to whether they were going to make those guys running backs or whether they were going to make them quarterbacks.
“So guys like Johnny Unitas and Bill Wade and (Charlie) Conerly and guys like that, they were all tailbacks that became quarterbacks. Pretty big guys, a guy like Unitas, he was 220 pounds. Wade was 215, 220. They were big guys; they weren’t like the Fran Tarkenton type. They were big guys that could run. They just weren’t fast enough. Then the runners like the Hornungs stayed as runners.”
Belichick — known for his unbelievable memory — even recalled who the T-Birds lost to.
“We were OK. Who did we lose to? I think we lost to Elks or somebody like that,” Belichick said. “Those were big tilts there in Annapolis.”
