The process to get a job with Bill Belichick is, well, a process. Hours alone diagramming plays, bull-in-a-ring interviews with the staff, 1-on-1 sit downs with the head man that function more as intellectual sparring sessions than interviews and, if you get the job, the expectation that you come to Foxborough... immediately.
And that's if you're lucky.
Writes MassLive's Kevin Duffy:
"Those interviews are long days," Belichick said. "I think you see after 8, 9, 10 hours of an interview you see what kind of staying power they have, how excited they are to keep grinding through the information, how detailed they are, how important it is to them."
The morning begins in isolation. The candidate arrives and is sequestered to work on an extensive film breakdown. This can be a stress-inducing start, considering the absurd level of detail required.
Daboll, for example, was given several hours. When his time expired, he looked down and thought, wait a minute, this can't be right. He had finished about eight plays.
"Come to find out that those pads take like 8-10 hours to do, for one game," Daboll said. "Unbelievable."
When he interviewed in 2001, McDaniels did "five plays in an hour, maybe."
Then comes the intimidating part. The prospective coaching assistant, undoubtedly concerned about the minimal number of plays he just spent several hours diagramming, meets with several of his potential bosses.
"It puts them on the spot," Belichick said. "You're talking to a half-dozen people. What kind of poise and presence does he have in a group?"
Though the process of getting hired as a coaching assistant under Belichick is arduous -- and that seems like a dream compared to the actual work you'll be doing once hired -- the payoff is well worth it. Belichick has a history of hiring from within far above much of his peers, and those hires often go on to great heights in the NFL.
But to get there, though, you've got to earn it.