Patriots’ Brian Belichick Opens Up About Injury, Grueling Recovery

Jerod Mayo used to say the NFL has a 100% injury rate. He was referring to players, of course.

But one of Mayo’s fellow Patriots assistant coaches also has spent the past several months recovering from a serious offseason injury.

Brian Belichick, New England’s safeties coach, suffered a major knee injury that kept him away from the team facility for all of training camp and has prevented him from handling his usual on-field practice duties.

Belichick is on the mend, though. Two days after traveling with the Patriots to their 15-10 win over the New York Jets at MetLife Stadium, the young assistant discussed his arduous recovery in his first media availability of the season.

“Unfortunately, I sustained a pretty serious knee injury at the beginning of the summer,” Belichick said Tuesday in a video conference. “I had three surgeries and a long recovery to get back to being functional.

“I’ve always been a part of the team in the meetings and kept up with things, obviously. That’s fortunately been made easier nowadays with the accessibility with Zoom and stuff like that.”

Belichick said his experience coaching through the 2020 COVID-19 season, during which many team and positional meetings were held virtually, “absolutely” helped him remain connected during his absence.

“If we hadn’t gone through the experiences with (virtual) meetings, that would have been a pretty jarring change,” Belichick said. “But it made it pretty seamless. It did help. Obviously, it’s still tough … not to be with the players and with the other guys.”

Defensive play-caller Steve Belichick, cornerbacks coach Mike Pellegrino and defensive assistant V’Angelo Bentley picked up the slack on the field with Brian sidelined. He was able to rejoin the team about a month ago.

“Towards the start of the regular season, end of preseason, I was more functional to move around, more mobile and could come back into the building and be with the guys again,” Brian Belichick said. “So that was obviously a huge boost for me mentally after a long summer, but I’ve been really fortunate and lucky to work with a lot of great doctors that work with the team, a lot of great physical therapy people who work with the team, and that’s a great blessing to be in this situation and have those resources to help me.

“I’m happy to be more normal and just trying to win games for the team now.”

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Belichick still needs crutches to walk and wouldn’t put a timetable on when he’ll be back to full health. But since he watches Patriots games from the coaches booth rather than on the sideline, he hasn’t needed to alter his gameday routine.

“Game day is really no different than it was,” he said.

Belichick credited his wife, Callie, for helping him navigate the most difficult summer of his coaching career.

“She was my everything, because it was hard for me to take care of myself in between surgeries and stuff,” he said. “So that was enormous, and I’m so thankful for her. The people in the building were great, too, reaching out and trying to do whatever they could to help. Bring equipment to the house to try to help or catch me up on something that might have happened that wasn’t said in a meeting or something like that.

“So, it was a team effort. But no one more important than my wife at home. She was — and still is — great supporting me through this. I’m really thankful.”