Let’s rewind to January 2018. Super Bowl week. Minneapolis. While the Patriots prepped to clash with the Eagles (which they went on to lose 41-33), someone decided to ask Tom Brady a question completely unrelated to football. How do you make Bill Belichick smile? You’d expect Brady to offer a quick laugh before dodging the question. Instead, he delivered a classic deadpan: “Just say Navy, lacrosse, Lawrence Taylor … Bon Jovi.” He then pointed across the room and yelled, “HE’S SMILING! LOOK! HE’S SMILING!” Spoiler: Belichick wasn’t.

That exchange wasn’t just comic relief. It was a rare crack in the otherwise stone-faced armor of Bill Belichick, the man who spent two decades building the most ruthlessly efficient dynasty in NFL history with—you guessed it—Brady at the helm. Fast forward to 2025, and now, it’s Belichick doing the storytelling. A new chapter in Chapel Hill, a book flying off shelves, and the former Patriots coach sitting down with Ryan Clark on The Pivot Podcast, revealing what made Brady have the TB12 aura about him.

Clark didn’t waste time. “Page 199—that’s Tom Brady’s page, right?” he asked, referencing the 199th overall pick that altered NFL history. “There’s a quote there: ‘You cannot win the game until you keep from losing.’ Talk a little bit about that quote and how Tom Brady personified that.”

Belichick didn’t miss. “Tom did three things I thought were just unbelievably great as a quarterback,” he began. First, Brady eliminated negative plays. “No pre-snap penalties, no sacks, no strip sacks, no interceptions.” If the run wasn’t there, he’d kill it. If the pressure came, he had a quick out ready. The worst case scenario? “Second and 10 became third and five.” And in Belichick’s world, that was a win.

Then came the second layer. Belichick, always about execution, explained how Brady understood that success meant getting the ball out. “Tom, we can’t gain any yards until you get rid of the ball,” Belichick would remind him. And Brady listened. He figured out how to maximize everyone around him—whether it was Randy Moss going deep, Gronk bullying linebackers, or Julian Edelman slicing across the middle. “Almost like a point guard,” Belichick said, nodding to how Brady amplified talent instead of seeking it.

Finally, there was Brady’s mind. “He made great decisions under pressure and had a tremendous ability to see the field, understand situational football, and make quick decisions under pressure,” Bill said. The Hoodie bought in to all of these attributes of the TB12 brand. “To me, those are the things that made Tom… Those are the things that made him truly elite,” Belichick said. Not the arm. Not the stats. But the precision. The poise. The understanding of situational football. The moments when time slowed down for him and sped up for everyone else.

All of this—those traits, that mentality—is detailed across 280 pages of The Art of Winning, Belichick’s debut book that, ironically, has little to do with smiling and everything to do with mastering the grind. The book, now a New York Times bestseller, lets fans peek behind the curtain: the Navy roots, the Parcells mentorship, the hoodie mystique—and, of course, his football soulmate, Brady. In fact, Brady himself wrote: “Coach Belichick brought out the best in me. His book will do the same for you.” 

But Bill Belichick sees that Tom Brady’s mentality in Patrick Mahomes

Bill Belichick’s The Art of Winning is not only about the Dynasty. But beyond it, that W mentality in the contemporary football scene as well. And the man with eight Super Bowl rings offers something a little more layered — an insight into how two of the best to ever do it, Tom Brady and Patrick Mahomes, operate from the neck up.

“I’ve never engaged in this argument with my good friend Andy Reid,” Belichick writes. But he doesn’t tiptoe around the topic either. “Brady and Patrick Mahomes are both really good. Controversial, I know.” That line? It reads like Belichick grinning behind his hoodie, knowing exactly what he’s doing — poking the bear, but with facts.

He doesn’t crown either of them. What he does focus on, though, is mentality. How they handle success. And that’s where the comparison gets real. Belichick recalls a tight 2024 Chiefs win where Mahomes, instead of flexing, pointed out what he missed. “This kind of comment is music to my ears,” Belichick says. “Can’t get enough of it.” He even jokes he’d make it his ringtone.

Why does it matter? Because that’s the exact attitude Brady had when the Patriots steamrolled a team 28–10 and then TB12 would scream: “We should have scored forty-five!” That kind of mindset? It’s what Belichick calls “elite leadership.” And he doesn’t throw that phrase around lightly.

It’s not just about stats. Not even about rings. Belichick sees something deeper — that relentless internal standard. The quiet refusal to be satisfied. And in Mahomes, he sees it again. That Brady itch. That obsession with being better even when you’ve already won.

Mahomes, for his part, knows the bar Brady set, and he’s not afraid to talk about the cost of chasing it. “If I played until Tom’s age, my daughter would be 19 or 20,” he said ahead of the 2024 season. “I want to be there for my daughter… If I can do that, I’ll continue to play.”