TRANSCRIPT: Belichick’s Patriots Hall of Fame Speech as He Congratulations Scarnecchia and Vrabel On Their Induction
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Here’s the full transcript of what Bill Belichick had to say during Mike Vrabel and Dante Scarnecchia’s red jacket ceremony as the two were inducted into the New England Patriots’ Hall of Fame.
“Thank you. Great to see so many former players, coaches, Hall of Famers, video guys – great to see everybody here today. It’s always a great event to have the Patriots, Kraft Family welcome one of ours into the Hall of Fame and certainly, the two today are two of the most deserving people that could possibly be inducted. And I think it’s been said multiple times, I don’t want to beat a dead horse, but the way both Dante and Mike felt about the team and their unselfishness and their commitment to the team – T-E-A-M – team, in every sense of the word, I would say just puts them on a level and a pedestal that very few other players and coaches that I’ve worked with, you just can’t put them there. These two guys are just magnificent.”
“So I’ll kind of start with Dante. Scar and I worked together in ’96. I came here in the ’96 season after Cleveland with Coach Parcells, and the defensive staff was Dante, myself, Al [Groh], and Romeo [Crennel], and I loved working with those three guys. It was a fabulous year. Had so much enjoyment, learned so much. and we obviously had a good year. Came up a little short in New Orleans, but I mean, it was an amazing year and it was an amazing staff to be a part of.”
“Then, of course, three years later, coming back after Dante had been with Pete [Carroll] and had coached the offensive line … Look, Scar’s had a ton of experience coaching special teams, defense, offense, offensive line, I mean he’s just done it all and has a great understanding of the game. Time management, roster management, you know, Mike [Vrabel] talked a little bit about how he would hit different players in the locker room, not necessarily offensive lineman, but any position, he just had a way with everybody. Knew the right thing to say, maybe they didn’t want to hear it, but knew the right thing to say. Knew how to motivate people and could get the most out of them. And so, I was very, very fortunate and lucky that Scar, you decided to stay here in 2000. I know you had some other options, but it certainly worked out well for all of us. But that was really probably one of the key hires – re-hires, actually – that we had here.”
“I just can’t tell you how much we leaned on Scar for pretty much everything. Again, no matter what the situation was, whether it be scheduling or handling the team, maybe a tough loss, maybe going into a game, whatever the situation was, his experience, his knowledge, and again – his always doing what was best for the team, not necessarily what was best for the offensive line or for him or whatever – but, ‘Here’s what’s the best thing for the team,’ that opinion was always, [it] carried a ton of weight and that’s the way a lot of things went, was kind of based on his recommendation.”
“Two stories that just really pop into mind, are the, with Vollmer, you know, when we drafted Sebastian Vollmer, Seabass was a pretty inexperienced player at the University of Houston, and there was some really good things on tape, but he was young, he was inexperienced, and there were things on tape that didn’t look so good. And that was a big one for Scar to take a look at Vollmer and, like ‘Do we want this guy? Do we not want this guy? We know he’s got some talent, but is it ever going to come together, is this guy going to be all right?’ I mean, he came in his rookie year and ended up playing left tackle.”
[Turns to Matt Light]
“Matt, I think you were out.”
[Turns back to the audience]
“And blocked [Dwight] Freeney.”
[Turns to Matt Light]
“Freeney. Yeah. Because I know you’re not coming back up here again, so I’m sure you’ll roast me when you get a chance. And so, seeing how I’m the last guy in the line-up here… [Smiles] ”
[Turns back to the audience]
“But anyway, Scar came back with a recommendation on Vollmer that, ‘We want this guy.’ As it turned out, Oakland would who was picking right behind us, would have taken him if we didn’t take him where we did. He ended up starting at left tackle, right tackle, and had a great career for us.”
“And then a couple of years with [Nate] Solder, it was kind of the same thing. The way they played it at Colorado at that particular time, the offensive line kind of just backpedaled and stayed in front of the defender between him and the quarterback. But they always ended up in the quarterback’s lap and got shoved back a lot, and I just couldn’t turn the corner on Nate. ‘Does this guy have enough power to play? He just plays so soft, that it just doesn’t … ‘ And so it was the week before the draft, and I said, ‘Look, the only way I’m going to turn the corner on Nate Solder, Dante, is if you go out there and work this guy out and come back and tell me we’re going to be OK with him because I just can’t see it on the film. I just can’t get comfortable with it.’ He goes, ‘All right,’ gets on a plane, flies out to Colorado, works him out, comes back, and he says, ‘Bill, this guy’s got a lot of power. It’s what they teach him to do. It’s the way they do it. This guy has a lot of power. This guy’s going to be a really good football player. Within one week, in the spring, I’ll have him straightened out, and you won’t ever have to worry about his power because he has a tremendous lower body, and he’s a very explosive player.’ All right, so, Nate Solder.”
“And Nate, of course, not to get sidetracked here, but like [Richard] Seymour played nose tackle his rookie year, [Vince] Wilfork played defensive end his rookie year, Solder played tight end most of his rookie year until we could finally get everybody settled. But this kid came in and did a great job. And again, that’s just a story to tell you how much we relied on Scar’s evaluations and his opinion. It was Scar on Nate Solder all the way. If he had come back and said, ‘Nope,’ then it would have been ‘No.’ So, [turns to Scarnecchia] thank you.”
“So, speaking of offensive tackles, another one we had was a kid that we had signed from the Bears. Big Cat. Big Cat Williams. He had played several years with the Bears. So, we’re out in training camp, Big Cat’s – they don’t call him ‘Big Cat’ for nothing – this guy was like 6’8″, three, whatever, I mean, he blocks out the sun. You’re in the shade when you’re around him, and so it was about, I don’t know, 4th, 5th, 6th day of training camp, and frustrations kind of coming on, and I can still see Scar yelling at Big Cat, but he’s looking straight up at him like this [looks straight up and starts pointing upward], he’s like, ‘Big Cat, you don’t use our techniques, that’s why you’re not doing this right. You’re not having any success because you keep doing it your way, and your way’s not working. So you better start doing it our way, all right? Or you’re never going to be any good.” He’s looking straight up in the air and Big Cat’s looking straight down and I’m thinking, ‘Any second now, Big Cat’s going to just going to [motions a punch downward]. So, anyway, I’m kind of like, ‘He got an earful.’ So the offensive line is back there standing in the huddle, running a couple of more plays, whatever, and Big Cat’s there. Scar’s like, ‘Hey, is your family moved in yet? Did you guys find a place to stay?’ And that’s the way it was with Scar, is five minutes after after he ripped a player’s head off, Dan Connolly, ‘Hey Dan, how are your kids? How are your two kids doing? How do they like school?’ ‘Dave,you moved yet?’ He had a great way of teaching, of getting his point across and very, very effectively, but a great teacher. A great fundamental teacher, and a great scheme teacher.”
“And so lot of our successful plays, running plays, pass protections, having to handle some of the pass rushers in this league and some of the great pass rush teams, the Steelers, teams like that you’ve got to figure out how to block, he, Charlier, Josh, Billy O [Bill O’Brien], worked seamlessly with all those guys. You love working with Scar, and you know, when I got here in ’96 – that was another thing too that kind of shocked me – I got here early. I’d be, sometimes, I’d get here before five in the morning. Not before Scar. His car was in the lot when I got here. It didn’t matter what time I got here, his car was in the lot.”
“When I became a head coach, same thing. Come in early, Scar’s car was there. I don’t think I ever beat him into the office. Honest to God. Not one time. Or neither did anybody else. He had a tremendous work ethic, and tremendous production and again, his sense of doing what was right for the team was really unparalleled.”
“The same thing about Mike, honestly, it’s the very same thing about Mike. Everybody’s talked about it, and it would just be redundant to talk about what a great teammate he was. But, so I’ll go back to the beginning with Mike. And Romeo mentioned it, in ’96, [Editor’s note: it was ’97] we go to Ohio State, so we were at a different team at that point in time and had the first pick in the draft – we all know who that is, right? – And so we go to Ohio State and Orlando Pace is working out down there, right? So we have Orlando Pace down here [motions to his left], and then we have Shawn Springs and Ty Howard working here at corners, and we have Rob Kelly, right? Working over here, and then we’ve got these two guys down here [motions to his right], [Matt] Finkes and Vrabel, two defensive ends. And so kind of all the actions up here around Pace, and Springs, and Howard, and Rob Kelly and those guys.
[Turns to Vrabel]
“Did I leave anybody out? It was a pretty good group”
[Vrabel: “Yeah, it was a good group.”]
“It was a pretty good group.”
“So just like Romeo said, we were playing a 3-4, and we liked Mike. They took Farrior in the first round, so that kind of knocked us out of it, and Mike went in the third round to Pittsburgh. But it kind of went back to that workout there at Ohio State where, ‘If we ever have a chance to get this guy, this is what we’re looking for. Long, strong, tough, smart, not a bad place to start.”
“And so, really I think, when you look at free agency, Mike Vrabel would be kind of the poster child for what free agency can bring to players. Four years behind two really good players at Pittsburgh, had an opportunity to come here, and showed what a great player he was. He was certainly a good addition for Willie McGinest. I found that out at the Giants when we had Lawrence Taylor and then got Carl Banks. Carl Banks helped Lawrence Taylor be a better player. Lawrence Taylor was a great player in his own right, he didn’t need any help, I’m not saying that, but having another great outside linebacker to go with Willie with Mike, really balanced it off. You didn’t want to run at Mike, you didn’t want to run at Willie. You didn’t want to run away from either one of those guys, either. So that was a great situation.
“Mike continued to play in the kicking game. He was always on the punt team. Kickoff return, kickoff team when we needed him. He was always there to do those jobs and was in tremendous condition. Mike could take every play. He could play defense, he could take scout team if he wanted to. He could run all day and could go all day. And so he took a lot of scout team plays which was, you know…that got a little testy at times with some of our offensive players, especially the quarterback. So there were teams that we would play, Pittsburgh was a good example, and teams we would play like Pittbsurgh, and they would have players that were kind of unpredictable. Like, you didn’t really know what they were going to do. And [Troy] Polamalu was a great player, but sometimes he’d blitz on his own, sometimes he’d line up on the line of scrimmage and run to the deep part of the field. Sometimes, he’d line up on the deep part of the field and come running full speed and blitz. You just didn’t know where he was going to be. Sometimes he was in the deep part of the field, and he’d run underneath an in-cut at 10 yards and intercept it.”
“So, I’d stand up and tell the team, ‘All right, look, we’ve really got to watch out for this guy. Polamalu, he’s very instinctive. You don’t really know what he’s going to do, he could be all over the place.’ So we get into practice, and I kind of turn around and look up, and there’s Mike playing free safety. He’s got the Polamalu jersey on. And he’s diving down and breaking up in-cuts when he’s supposed to be 25 yards deep, and he’s blitzing when he’s supposed to be in coverage and sacking the quarterback, and just generally disrupting practice. And the quarterback’s going crazy, It’s like, ‘Well he’s not going to do that!’ And Mike’s like, ‘Hey, Bill said, we don’t know what this guy’s gonna to do. I’m your man.'”
“And, of course, in retrospect, Tom [Brady] looked back on it, and, ‘You know what? I mean, he really taught me to like, I have to be careful of where this guy is because that’s the way he plays.'”
“That was an example of Mike on the practice field. Covered kickoffs, scout team, it didn’t matter. He was always there and he always competed. I would say, Mike, Rodney Harrison and those guys, every play was pretty much full-speed. There was no plays off with those guys.”
“Mike had a … you know … Look, this is still a PG audience, all right? Mike had an edge to him. I think we’ve all talked about his sense of humor and so forth. I don’t know if you agree Jen [looks at Vrabel’s wife]? I mean, but Mike’s got an edge. And he would say some things that probably a lot of other players wouldn’t say, but could kind of get away with them because of the respect everybody had for him. And he was funny. He was funny.”
“So, I walk in there, this is in ’01, and announce as part of the morning announcements, so tomorrow, we’re going to have weigh-in before squad meeting tomorrow.’ And Mike’s sitting in the back of the room, and he yells down, ‘Hey, Bill, it’s not the players you should weigh in. Why don’t you weigh in the coaches?'”
“So, we go through the roster here. We’ve got Romeo, Rob Ryan, [Eric] Mangini, Ivan [Fears] – who was heavy at that time – Brad Seely, Pepper [Johnson], Jeff Davidson. The only guy that really would make weight that was in great shape, there he is right there [points to Scarnecchia].”
“It broke up the room. You couldn’t do anything but laugh because, honestly, you look around, and all of us were overweight, except for Dante. And Mike, flat out, called us out on it, no doubt about it. But as many of Mike’s teammates have alluded to, Mike’s a very intelligent player, a very smart player. Let me just say, the tight-end thing, I was always kind of amazed at the tight-end thing, and I’ve got to give Charlie and Dante a lot of credit on this too. Because, we’ve used him a lot on the goal line, but we never ran behind Mike, ever. It always went to the other side. I’m like, ‘We keep throwing the ball to Mike, but they know we’re not going to run behind him. Like, this can’t keep working.’ But it did. But it did.”
“And so, we ran him across, and then we ran him to the outside. And then, we ran him across. We ran him to the outside. And with good backs, guys like Corey Dillon and guys like that, they had so many people up there stopping the run, he was able to spring free. And Mike had great hands, Mike had great hands. And so, 10 catches, 10 touchdowns, I mean, I’m not arguing with it, man. It’s a production business.”
“But just in terms of the defensive unit, and [Connolly] talked about it, Mike was a very good situationally aware player. Not only could he understand what he was doing and what games to run with the line and stuff like that, but time, timeouts, down and distance, score, situation, weather, all those kind of things, he was always kind of one jump ahead on that. On the sideline, as we were talking about the situation, getting ready to go back in, he was the type of player that would always bring up the point, ‘Hey, remember, they did this in this situation, we saw it on film,’ or, ‘Hey, this situation, let’s be ready to do this,’ that type of thing. He’s always one step ahead.”
“It was very easy to picture Mike as a coach when he was a player. It really was because he was very cerebral, but at the same time, Mike is one of the best fundamental players that I think I’ve coached, and I’ve coached a lot of linebackers. But Mike was a very good fundamental player. The use of his hands. Mike’s long, he’s very strong, very stout, and has a good feel for how to rush against those long tackles. Obviously, that’s why he’s wearing a red jacket, I mean, he was a very, very productive player. But his leadership, and his intelligence that he brought to our team, not just our defense but I would say even the coaching staff. There’s a lot of times where you would just kind of ask Mike, ‘Hey, Mike, what do you think about this situation?’ and whatever his answer was, it’s either what you were thinking or something that maybe you should be thinking about.”
“You know, just can’t tell you how fortunate I feel like we were to get Mike. The signing bonus … you should talk to your agent about that, Mike, I mean, that’s the only thing I can tell you. [Looks at Vrabel] That’s why you have an agent. But it really was. It was about opportunity. We’ve all taken our lumps for a good opportunity and then if you can make that work into something else, then that’s really where it is. But Mike did a great job of that in that season that he talked about. We were 5-5 halfway through the ’01 season and then won 9 straight. A lot of those wins were close games. Kick returns, defensive turnovers, the interception in the Super Bowl, between him and Ty [Law], things like that, that’s what a lot of that year was. And I think after the success that we had that year, not that it really took a long time for guys like Mike, and Bobby Hamilton, and AP [Anthony Pleasant], and [Roman] Phifer, and all the guys we brought in that year to establish themselves, but the credibility at that point was just … it was very strong, and the team just got better for the next three or four years.
“So it was a great honor for me to be here to speak at both you, Mike, and Dante. Thank you for all you’ve done for me, my family, our team, our organization. Certainly, those banners up there wouldn’t be flying without your contributions. [Connolly], Matt [Light], Drew [Bledsoe], same thing, and all the other guys who are up here too. Great players win games, and as Romeo said, they make you good coaches. So very fortunate to have some of these guys that are in the Hall of Fame, but most recently here, Mike. Really appreciate all that you did for me and all that you did for our team, and [looks at Mike] sorry about the trade to Kansas City. We’ve covered that one, so we’ll leave that one alone. But appreciate everyone coming out, appreciate your support, your attendance, and your attention. So thank you very much, and [looks at Mike again] congrats, man.”
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