July 2016:  Tom Brady grabbed his facemask and held it for a few seconds. He then slammed his helmet to the ground, mouth guards and earpieces flying everywhere. Minutes later, after another blown 11-on-11 set, he dropped to one knee and launched his helmet again. Just another day at the New England Patriots training camp, where legendary head coach Bill Belichick watched it all unfold, exactly as planned. This wasn’t chaos, this was the Belichick way as Brady remembers it.

“He’s the best coach to ever coach in the NFL,” Brady said on the Barstool Sports podcast on January 13. “He’s one of the greatest motivators. There’s so many things that are just uncanny about his coaching style, that he had such high expectations for us, and he never let off the gas.”

But motivational speeches weren’t exactly Belichick’s formula. He ran on relentless accountability, every single day. Offseason workouts built the foundation, training camp sharpened them, and the regular season tested them. The playoffs? That’s where it all paid off.

“It didn’t matter if it was March,” Brady continued. “March was really important because March led to April, and April was really important because it led to May, and so forth, all the way up to the start of the season, all the way up to the final games of the season to prepare us for the playoffs. And then if we were fortunate enough to make it to the last game, we were so prepared because every day was important.”

And Belichick didn’t play favorites. During training camps, he’d squirt water on footballs right before field goals. He’d spray holders in the face and hands mid-snap, douse kickers as they approached the ball, even when it was raining. That was the formula for simulating chaos, building mental toughness, and testing everyone: no days off, no excuses, no expectations, not even for Tom Brady.

Former Patriots cornerback Aqib Talib saw it firsthand and recalled it later. “Once in practice, Brady threw a seam ball that was intercepted, and Bill, man, he chewed Tom out, saying ‘You got 130 career interceptions,’ or whatever it was, ‘and half of them are on this route. You keep doing the same s*** over and over and this is what happens.’ Right then you know two things about the Patriots and Bill Belichick: Everybody is treated the same, and you better get you s*** together.”

Belichick also had strict, non-negotiable rules. No fights at practice, for one. Break that, and you’re gone. Julian Edelman and Stephon Gilmore learned this the hard way when they got into a fight at camp. Belichick ejected them both from the camp immediately. And all of this worked.

“There was never a day where you could go in there and underperform on a practice and him not call you out, and that’s hard,” Brady concluded. “It’s hard to live up to that standard every day, but when you look back, we all appreciate the coaches that got the best out of us.”

The results? A 249-75 record, six Super Bowls across nine appearances, seventeen AFC East titles, nineteen back-to-back winning seasons. Brady and Belichick became the first coach-QB duo to win five championships together before pushing that number to six. That wasn’t luck, that was Belichick’s no-nonsense coaching approach. Those helmet slams by Brady weren’t tantrums; they were the price of greatness. Belichick demanded it, Brady delivered, and the dynasty rolled on.

But there’s more to this story. Belichick wasn’t just pushing Brady on the practice field. He was teaching him how to think like a quarterback, how to see the game through a defensive coordinator’s perspective, and how to win.

Bill Belichick: The coach who did two jobs

During the 2001 training camp, the season that launched the Bill Belichick-Tom Brady era, tragedy struck. Patriots quarterback coach Dick Rehbein died unexpectedly on August 6, 2001, of heart failure. Belichick absorbed those responsibilities himself, becoming what Brady later called a “quasi-quarterback coach.”

“We didn’t have a quarterback coach,” Brady remembered on the Unblinded with Sean Callagy podcast. “Coach Belichick became the quasi-quarterback coach. And he would come in and instruct the quarterbacks: ‘This is how we’re going to read defense. This is how we’re going to read coverages. This is how you’re going to understand formation, shifts, and motions. I’m going to teach all you quarterbacks how defenses are called.”

That was a head coach teaching quarterbacks mechanics, breaking down coverages, and installing the offense. It was something he never really got credit for, just an added burden without recognition. But Belichick went all-in, and Brady benefited the most of all.

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“And it was just such an eye-opening experience for me to have Coach Belichick come in as our quarterback coach,” Brady said. “And again, he took me under his wing, he embraced everything that I was. He knew my strengths, and we developed a very special relationship over that time.”

The Patriots started 0-2 that season before Tom Brady took over. They finished by hoisting the Lombardi Trophy after a 20-17 upset over the St. Louis Rams. That Super Bowl launched the most dominant two-decade run in NFL history, all built on one principle: every day matters. March, July, February, all of it. And looking back, Brady wouldn’t change a thing.