Bill Belichick Is ‘On A Quest To Find Ingenuity,’ According To Paul Rabil

BOSTON — New England Patriots head coach Bill Belichick’s love for lacrosse is as well documented as wide receiver Chris Hogan’s college experience in the sport.

Belichick’s foundation not only provides “coaching, mentorship and financial support” to youth football players but also to kids pursuing lacrosse. Belichick already has one former college lacrosse player on his roster in Hogan, but he could have had another. Paul Rabil, who Belichick previously called “the face of lacrosse,” once showed interest in switching sports.

“There was a point where I bought some football girdles, and I was talking to my strength and conditioning coach,” Rabil said Friday at Championship Chat, a fundraising event for Belichick and Rabil’s foundations. “I was like, ‘Hey, I’d love to do this.’ Coach (Belichick) had always said I would be a safety. I would like to have played receiver. So, we didn’t connect there.

“Now, had he come to me and be like, ‘I think you could play receiver for us,’ then I might have actually thought about it. I think ultimately it was — as a professional athlete and knowing other professional athletes across other sports, I certainly didn’t think about it as something like, ‘oh, yeah, of course that’s something I could do.’ I have more respect than anyone for the type of work and commitment and experience that goes into it. So, had I made that jump when I was 23 or 24, I was playing the long game and hopefully making a team by the time I was 28 or 29.”

Belichick has touched on this conversation before, as well.

“When he was coming out of (Johns) Hopkins, he was like, ‘I want to give football a try.’ I’m like, ‘Paul, you are the face of lacrosse. You are the biggest lacrosse player in the world. You can’t play football.’ And he was like, ‘Yeah, I guess you’re right,'” Belichick said last year.

Rabil said Belichick might have been “appeasing my competitive nature.”

Belichick and Rabil met when the lacrosse star, now a member of Major League Lacrosse’s New York Lizards, was playing at Johns Hopkins. They’ve kept in touch ever since.

“(The relationship has) probably taught me more than I’ve — just from me taking a step back and understanding why he spends time with folks like myself and others because it shows how intellectually curious he is, meeting guys across other sports, spending time with other coaches, other players, musicians,” Rabil said. “He’s really on a quest to find ingenuity. And that’s really impressive to me, because a lot of folks, to get to the top, their ego tends to get in the way. He’s someone that’s obviously very true to himself, very self-aware but very selfless by nature of his friendships.”

Rabil listed off the biggest lessons he’s learned from Belichick.

“We always hammer home work ethic, grit, leadership, but I think what we talk about more than anything else is the nuances of the game and certain things that you may pick up on that’s different from viewing the game from the sideline as a coach versus playing,” Rabil said. “And more just talking through the minutiae of sports. When you talk about it, it’s a game of inches, so a high level, we look at the game the same way, so we spend a lot of time on the microcosms.”

Rabil certainly sees a side of Belichick many don’t. While it might feel surreal to be buddies with Belichick, Rabil said the head coach doesn’t make it feel that way.

“I think that’s one of his best qualities,” Rabil said. “We’ll see each other maybe a couple times, three times a year, and it’s just like we picked up the last time.”

Thumbnail photo via Mark J. Rebilas/USA TODAY Sports Images