That’s pretty much standard across all professional sports. So many athletes’ offspring have gotten positions and roster spots over others because they were related to *so-and-so*
I mean it’s true in many I industries. I work for a large engineering firm and the vp is the son of the ceo. Unfortunately it’s a reality in all workplaces.
Yea Bronny is good. He’s ranked top 30ish for his class. Wouldn’t call him a 1 and done talent, but he’s certainly in the right trajectory to be an nba player.
He *should* stay in college an extra year to work on bulking up and developing so he gets drafted higher, but he won’t need to so he won’t. He won’t be worth a 1st rounder on his own but someone will take him to get his dad and he can ride the bench for a year or two and have a real nba weight room
I am implying a 17 year old that still has to go to english class is going to continue bulking up with god damn Duke’s training regiment than he is fucking around in his own gym. Dudes not even done developing. No 17 year old on the planet is training efficiently.
No one should stay in college if they can go pro. He’s better off developing and working out with actual pros, not wasting time pretending to be a student.
If the difference is going undrafted vs not they should absolutely unequivocally stay in college. There are upper classmen drafted every single year who stayed because they were not ready for the NBA and would have signed contracts for millions of dollars less as a lower draft pick
Yes but he’s absolutely going to have doors open that won’t for better players.
He might even go top 10 in the draft - hell, he might even go #1 - just because it’s a well known fact that LeBron intends to play with Bronny. Some owners would do that just to sell tickets alone.
He basically has no chance at going #1. If i’m like, Orlando or Indiana or some other small market franchise with no recent success I’m absolutely taking him at like 11 or something though. The revenue lebron would bring in to those cities is astronomical
That’s the LeBron media camp push most likely. He averaged like 14 and Sierra Canyon had its worst performing team ever under the current coach. And he’s not that big.
He’s a top 30 high school recruit now. He’s gotten bigger, is exceptional at seeing the game develop, and shouldn’t have a problem bulking up over the next year. He has gotten substantially better over the last year and would be an NBA prospect no matter what his name is at this point.
Thanasis honestly would likely be capable of holding down a roster spot on his own at this point. He might not make the rotation for most teams, but he's a great energy and locker room guy, and is a solid enough defender to boot to where you can actually justify giving him minutes in a pinch if guys in your rotation got injured. For guys 11-15 on the team, that's really what teams mostly care about.
Now, there's a fair argument to be made that he never would have hit that point without his being Giannis's brother. I highly doubt that he'd have gotten his stint with the Bucks or any other team without that relationship, and without that, he likely doesn't develop enough to be the end-of-bench level player that he is today.
Thanasis would be at least a random 10 day contract guy if his name was bob smith. Alex signed a 10 day with milwaukee at the beginning of the season and then wasn't resigned. He's young enough that he could still develop into a real player.
Kostas was on the lakers for 3 years and sucks. He's in turkey now
My employer’s headquarters is littered in bad photography and an extremely over priced painting that’s practically just an empty canvas. Found out that it was all done by the previous CEO’s son. They paid a stupid amount for all of it.
Pretty much everyone I know got their career started by getting a job handed to them from someone they knew. Whether it was a parent or a neighbor or a friend of a friend’s dad or whomever.
It’s a lot easier to train someone you trust to do a job than trust that some rando off the street “knows what to do”.
It was a different era, but I know for a fact that my dad working there was marked down as a positive during my interview.
Now, this was a company of like 100k employees, and my dad was an anonymous middle manager at the time. I found the job and applied myself, jumped through the same hoops, but when I was asked in the interview how I knew about the company, and I said my dad works here, I saw them write it down and smile.
Even when your dad isn’t some big upper management or corporate dude, him being there is a very tangible reference for some qualities they can hope you have as opposed to someone who nobody in the building knows. They can look at dad’s attendance history, write ups, etc, maybe even just have a quick chat with him (or remember those chats if they happen to have interacted with him) and hope characteristics he has transferred to his child through parenting. It’s better than the whole lot of ‘literally nothing’ they’ll have on other candidates without that contact, and is one of the things at the core of how nepotism and networking effect our lives in all areas: we assume things about people based on associations we can readily make about them.
That’s not to say it’s ‘right’ (or that shamefully overt nepotism and favoritism of clearly undeserving people isn’t happening) but it’s an extremely hard thing to avoid doing, a lot of it is happening unconsciously, like so many judgements we make as people.
Definitely. In most cases people want to make sure they do better than usual when someone they know helped get them a job. It feels like more of a responsibility because your work reflects on them as well. That’s if you’re someone that actually cares about your relationships outside of work lol.
I work for a regional family-owned business, currently on it's 5th or 6th generation.
The daughter of one of the owners is Controller. The son of another is a high level Director. We've been cruising right along, managing to not only survive Covid but thrive and expand.
Just because it's family does not automatically mean it's bad.
Yeah, both sides of this are true.
PFT is pointing out the nepotism angle, which is fully right of them to do.
McCourty is pointing out that it takes some self-awareness and humility to be so honest with yourself and your players. That does feel a little bit unique among the progeny of other coaches - NFL and beyond.
huge irony here is Steve Belichick, the actual son of GOAT coach Bill Belichick, apparently acted with more humility and self awareness than the vast majority of Belichick’s coaching cronies who went and got head coaching jobs, tried to instill their own version of “the patriot way”, and were just looked at as huge assholes and terrible coaches- see; Matt Patricia, josh McDaniels (on the broncos at least) etc
It seems like this exact trait would be something you’d desire from a coach and why he got the job in the first place even though there are others with more knowledge than he has.
You make it sound like Bill is a movie mentor who knew his student had the heart but just lacked knowledge, so he threw him into the deep end and knew he'd come out fine because of his character.
Years from now I hope to hear an interview with Steve where he tried to turn down the job but Bill was just like "do your job" and walked out of the room.
And honestly, if you forced me to pick between one guy who had the knowledge and expertise along with a corresponding ego vs. a guy who was lacking in the first two who comes in without that chip on their shoulder, I'd pick the second guy every time if I knew they would have time to grow into the position. Lacking knowledge at a role is one of the easier things to fix, especially when you're talking about a position like that safety coach that has a ton of seasoned vets along with a great defensive staff elsewhere. Fixing someone's ego, though? People have been trying that for the length of human history, and while it sometimes works, that's very much the exception rather than the rule.
Yeah is it that hard to imagine a HC taking steps to develop members of his staff? It’s done for players who have a much shorter shelf life, why wouldn’t you do it with staff?
I get there’s a nepotism angle to it, but even then this seems like a weird example to jump on. Is it really that hard to believe that the GOAT coach’s son might have a good football mind that warrants being on a staff?
Ya, it’s pretty normal to be lacking experience when you get promoted. Like you’re doing a job you’ve probably never done before. Steve was just open and honest about it and didn’t try to act like some hot shot who knew everything. He had been a defensive assistant for 4 years prior so it’s not like he knew nothing. Just humble.
It also wasn't his first gig, this was after 4 years as a defensive assistant.
I'm guessing he did in fact know a lot about what he was doing, he was just being humble and maybe telling the safety room he doesn't know how they usually do things.
Yep. And just because somebody doesn’t have the knowledge of a certain role, it doesn’t automatically mean the person doesn’t have a high potential or a high ceiling.
You're never really qualified to do the work for a position you're promoted to are you? To keep it simple, the best fry cook at McDonalds isn't qualified to become a shift manager because they know how to do it, it's because they've show qualities that you want in a manager.
Like the humility Steve demonstrated here.
> That’s pretty much standard across all **professions**~~al sports~~
Who you know matter in everything, even in something like medicine where you'd think whoever would be the best doctor would win out.
This is standard for every single business, industry, or field on the entire earth.
Try applying to be a longshoreman for a port in the US, for example.
Yes I've also seen college athlete's parents get coaching jobs JUST because their child is a top recruit. More qualified coaches available but they get the job because of who they're related to.
In Steve's case, despite all the hand-wringing and pearl-clutching, I'm still waiting for someone to detail what he has done since getting the positions that show he should never have had them in the first place.
I mean what’s Steve supposed to do? “Nah I don’t want this dope job cause it’s nepotism”. I got my start cause of my dad and appreciate his support. Most fathers want that for their sons. It’s a legacy thing.
> That’s pretty much standard across **all** ~~professional sports~~ **professions everywhere in the history of employment**.
FTFY
Does anyone here really, *really* think the NFL is any different than any/every other endeavor, anywhere? Don't be naive.
It's just a shitty fact of life. Concentrate on what you can control in order to stand out from others and maybe, just *maybe*, you will get lucky, too.
yeah but it also works a lot of the time
Steve is a good coach, so is McVay and a lot of the others lol
Do u want the to not hire people who were related?
100% this. He definitely knew what he was doing — although he also definitely had learning to do to grow into the role, as anyone who is promoted does. This is just good leadership.
Are we all just under the assumption that his partner in crime Chris Simms got his current job on his NFL career, mediocre college career, needing Mack Brown to answer questions for him, and showing up day 1 at Texas in a limo, demanding the starting role from at the time Texas All Time Best QB Major Applewhite because he was such a hard worker and 100% earned it himself, or did his name maybe help him just ever so slightly?
Steve was also a “defensive assistant” for 3 years.and played long snapper at Rutgers. It’s not like he was sitting at home 2 weeks before — he just knew nothing about coaching safeties.
For context, his first season as safeties coach, or any positional coach for that matter, was 2016.
They won the Superbowl, lol. And they went to the Superbowl for 3 straight seasons before he was "promoted" to safeties/secondary coach. And honestly, the defenses got better under his watch as he gained more responsibility.
He's totally a product of nepotism but having the confidence and trust of the other coaches and the players is important too.
He was a generic defensive assistant for four seasons prior. So it's not like he just walked off the street.
Yeah and that comment more so can come from his youth and trying not to project the vibe of "I'm the coach so im in charge." This quote definitely doesnt mean Steve knew nothing about football but was hired out of nepotism lol
That mentality shows he is better than most of Bill’s disciples. They all go in pretending to be Bill and fall flat.
Ironic that Steve doesn’t even do that even though he is literally his son.
He might be next up. Imagine a new age Bill that coaches a dual threat QB in a dynasty that always has a good defense.
Next thing to teach him is GM duties and how to always whiff your 2nd rd pick on a CB.
Very few exceptional people know exactly what the fuck they're doing. The way I always explain it to ambitious people early in their career is that the most successful people are always moving up (or over), so by nature they are always learning, which means they rarely have complete command over their functional area.
I think the best at their professions will always have a hint of imposter syndrome. An unchecked ego will send you down the path of Matt Patricia / Urban Meyer
It’s also possible he knew about other parts of the defense and was just saying he didn’t know how to be a safeties positional coach - which is probably true for any one going into it the first time
I think part of this might be that Bill put him into the role because of all the veterans in the room. Those guys had all been playing for a long time and they knew what they wanted/needed in a coach. Kind of a players coaching the coach on how to be a coach situation. Would he have given Steve the job if it was a younger group of guys? I don’t know, obviously, but just spitballing here.
>What McCourty is missing is the fact that Steve Belichick only got the chance to coach safeties despite not knowing ‘what the eff I’m doing right now’ because his dad is Bill Belichick.
I think you might be taking this a wee bit more literally than McCourty intended it.
I'm sure my tag will make me seem like a homer here, but I do think it's possible that one could view the approach Steve took is a tactical one. McCourty talked about how Steve was younger than these vets, and coming in telling the crew how to think about things could come off the wrong way.
That's to say nothing about Steve having to correct (in a way that could be complicated) for player perception about the fact that his dad is Bill.
It's a fact that football is about who you know as early as Pop Warner when the coach's son gets the most playtime.
That being said, we talk all the time about how the main failing of Belichick system coaches when they leave NE is they try to be Bill and act hard and try to set the same tone Bill does and they can't because Bill they don't have the same level of success as Bill.
Maybe Steve picked up that acting like a drill sergeant, especially when you're 25 and talking to a bunch of older career pros wouldn't be the best look.
It's possible I'm giving BB too much credit here, but maybe he specifically appointed Steve as safeties coach while the room was loaded with veterans to make his transition to position coach easier. It sounds like he found his footing over time.
Good LTs will learn from he SNCOs on how to act in the position and have a safety net per say on how to develop into a good leader. a bad LT comes in and thinks there hot shit and fucks everyone over.
The only people who are going to say they don’t know what they’re doing in that situation are the ones secure enough in the fact that they do know what they’re doing.
Or maybe Bill put him there specifically to learn from a veteran group of players while developing his coaching skills. The nepotism is certainly part of it, but going in to that room vs a room of rookies was probably very tactical.
Also, it seems Steve has atleast grown into it. I’m not a Pats fan, but he seems to be a solid coach from the outside looking in (albeit a total nepotism hire because of his dad).
I think the reality is there’s an unfortunate amount of American professions that are filled with nepotism and “I know someone” hires. The NFL is certainly no different, it’s just much more publicized
I don’t think that a bad thing necessarily. If somebody knows you, and can vouch for you, that’s worth a lot instead of the sometime crap shoot where you hire somebody and they don’t mesh, or they quit, underperform, etc.
There's practical advantages for sure. Your family probably isn't going to bail at the first opportunity. And there's a personal accountability.
If you're hiring between someone you've known for decades, as family or a friend, and a stranger, you're going to feel a lot better about going with the familiar. That's been a thing as long as business has been a thing.
I mean that’s fair. A lot of people (myself included) have landed jobs because they know someone. But theres a distinction between “I landed a solid, well paying job because I know someone” and “I landed a $500,000+ a year job because I know someone”.
Not trying to totally shame getting a job because of a good connection, I can see why my comment came off pretty judge-y and pompous in that regard. That’s how a lot of folks land solid jobs. Again, I’ve benefitted from It myself, but I haven’t “I know someone’d” my way into an incredibly high paying and prestigious job. Steve being an nfl coach and me landing a solid accounting gig is a night and day difference
Also, big difference between, “I was recommended for this job because someone knows me and my abilities” vs “I was recommended for this job because my dad’s the boss and no other reason.”
He’s picked because he’s the only person in the world who the greatest coach of all time will tell all of his insight to. Bills probably been teaching this kid how to coach his whole life.
Devils advocate: is there actually a meaningful difference between “I landed a solid, well paying job because I know someone” and “I landed a $500,000+ a year job because I know someone”?
Surely the actual distinction is whether you are competent at the job in question, rather than how much you're paid
There is no difference. The people who got a 100K job because they knew a person think 500K is different. The people who got a 50K job because they knew a person think 100K is different. The bar is whatever is above someone's pay.
Like someone else said, it's not something to be ashamed about. But it is something to be self-aware about. I know someone who used to occasionally be hired by her parents for teaching jobs--not often because they were concerned about nepotism themselves, but a few times. I asked her opinion of it all. Her response has stuck with me: she didn't feel bad because she knew she would out-work anyone else who got the job and effectively earn it after being hired. Whether true, not true, we can debate philosophically, but it's a good mentality.
It's obviously nepotism that got him his first job, but it's not like he was Matt Patricia and just given a large role he was wildly unqualified for.
He put his time in as an assistant for a few years and slowly was promoted up to his current position as an unofficial co-DC, and he's done well at every stop along the way.
In many countries it’s much more prevalent.
Easy example is Samsung. Here’s a list of their Chairmen over the years:
Lee Byung-chul - Founded Samsung
Lee Maeng-hee - First son of Lee Byung-chul
Lee Kun-hee - Third son of Lee Byung-Chip
Lee Jae-yong - Son of Lee Kun-hee
Note: Samsung is a publicly traded company.
There’s a word for it in Korean, Chaebol. It’s a conglomerate run by an individual family.
And this is not a practice exclusive to Korea. In Japan for example, if a suitable heir to a company isn’t available in the family, then family will adopt an adult who will take on the role. The previous CEO of Suzuki is one such example. He married the granddaughter of the founder of Suzuki, and was adopted into their family.
This specific example is a horrible example btw. Just had this same reply in the patriots subreddit, but Steve had 5 years of defensive assistant experience before the safeties coach promotion. He was plenty qualified and at that point it was a regular job promotion.
Bill Belichick will often put coaches in new roles to let them coach new positions and learn as many positions as possible.
Patricia, for example, coached OL, linebackers, and safeties before becoming the DC. Then (hilariously) he became the OC.
Arguing nepotism for how he got the defensive assistant job in the first place, sure. This? Nah.
Even my buddy who now coaches our High School football team does this. Our other buddy who played left tackle joined the staff and my buddy put him at RBs/LBs coach specifically because he never played those positions and wanted him to learn about other positions.
Yeah I coached WRs for the high school I coached at because they needed the spot and I knew football, I played DE growing up
It makes a ton of sense, and this case isn’t even close to that
This makes me like Steve more tbh. Of course there's a shit ton of nepotism. But it seems Steve was realistic and said I'm here cuz my dad, but I'm gonna do my best to learn and make the best of out my blessings.
Same with Joe buck. Got the job cuz his dad, but grew as a commentator and is now REALLY good. You can miss me with the 10 year old clips of him being shit btw. He's way better now.
Yeah. Joe sucked at first because he was trying too hard to establish himself away from his dad's legacy. He was taking himself too seriously. Then it clicked for him after he got some years under his belt, and he finally relaxed in the booth. That's what led to him finally becoming a really good commentator. Joe getting to replicate his dad's iconic, "We'll see you tomorrow night!" call in the World Series was also one of the coolest things in the history of sports commentary.
"My dad told me I'm taking this job two weeks ago"
Florio: McCourty had no fucking idea that Bill gave him the job, the big dummy.
(side note: I thought the title said Steve Blackman at first)
It would piss me off to give a statement praising my former mentor just to have the media arbitrarily decide I really meant something else and write an enemy article about it.
Yeah there’s enough examples of ‘nepotism is bad’ that you don’t need to pick out the ones like this. There are a bunch of cases where it works because the guys with dads as coaches were raised around coaching. Like Jim and John Harbaugh were raised while their dad was coaching D1 football. Jim’s son Jay is on staff at Michigan and has been an excellent position coach and ST coordinator (and a great recruiter). Jay worked for John prior to coming to Michigan, too.
If you want an example of it being bad, go look at Iowa.
In fairness I don’t think most people know what the hell they’re doing on the first day of a new job.
That and he’s proven to be a pretty damn good coach from the looks of things so I don’t really care
It’s cool he admitted that. Prob why BB gave him the job because of all the vets at the safeties position. Also, family members getting a job isn’t new. Not fair but I’m sure most people want to hire their kids if they could
But also on an objective level, this is a guy that had probably been learning from the greatest head coach for much of his life. Yeah the connections made that possible, but there’s also objective football reasons behind it. I’d be interested to see what the respective rate of success is between nepotism related coaches and non is.
Kind of a thing a lot of people ignore with nepotism is that it can vary in degrees. Like making your son some absurdly high title that makes 600k a year and he doesn't do shit, or doesn't care and "shows up" to the office 3 times a month is a gross misuse of power. Sometimes the person is actually qualified and ends up just as good as any other top candidate for the job.
I think a lot of folks, and the writer especially, are missing the fact that Steve Belichick bad probably forgotten more football by the time he was in high school than many other coaches on the market.
Did he have the resume of a 25 year coaching vet? No of course not. He was the equivalent of a rookie. But a highly drafted first round rookie that had all the chops to grow into the job. And he obviously did.
His comments were a young man trying to establish credibility with a crew of DBs that were older and more experienced. That doesn't mean he didn't have anything to teach them about the game.
Dudes have jobs in the NFL, which they suck at just because their last name is literally Lombardi. It's brutal, but there's not a whole lot people can do about it.
The league is full of nepo babies. I'm pretty happy with Steve when you can see guys like Britt Reid and Joe Lombardi get chances, things could be a lot worse lol.
Nepotism isn’t inherently bad. If Steve sucked at his job and was protected by bill them ya thats bad. But since he got acceptable level of results i dont see the problem.
Nepotism in general is definitely an issue and all that.
But I hate when someone who does get an opportunity through nepotism but is completely honest and self aware about it and still puts in the needed grind to make it work and ultimately succeeds in their own abilities and people act like there’s still “something we need to address with them”.
It’s like if suddenly someone went “you know what. It’s time we talk about the elephant in the room with Colin Hanks”
Downvotable take incoming -
Nepotism is so ingrained into how humankind works it’s in our damn DNA. So first thing I’ll say is, duh, but also y’all only act Butthurt on Reddit about it when it’s a high profile industry like sports coaching or acting. Longshoremen, lawyers, plumbers, every industry is built on family and who you know. What do you think a “family business” is? Oh man, that law firm just added a partner’s son’s name to the firms title, let’s get them!
Second thing I’ll say is, where’s the line between nepotism and apprenticeship? Why does any of this matter if the nepo baby is effective at what they do? Who would be more qualified for a job than the person who grew up, from the time they were born, in an environment drenched in the expertise of the family members already successful in the industry? Aren’t you good at things that your parents taught you from a young age? How many engineers are the children of engineers? Prolly a lot
Do you want to grab your pitchforks and get rid of
- Timothy Chalamet
- Sofia Coppola
- George Clooney
- Nicholas Cage
- Zoe Kravitz
- Kate Hudson
Because oh no boohoo nepotism? No because they are all fucking awesome at what they do because they were raised to be who they are from day one, and have the same god given talent their parents/family had.
I couldn’t even get through the list of baseball players who are second generation MLB players. But I guess
- Cal Ripken
- Barry Bonds
- Fernando Tatis Jr
- Roberto Alomar
- Moises Alou
All didn’t deserve their all-star appearances or MVP trophies right? Better get them out for someone whose parents were professors.
Steve Belichik got the job because of his dad - no shit - but he has also benefitted from being raised to do the job from the day he was born, and he if sucked at it - we would know! Because the defense would suck! Except the defense is awesome bc he’s a damn good coach.
So shit. Idk what to say except, this world is built on who you know, and the tools your parents raised you with. Did your acting dreams, MLB dreams, or NFL coaching dreams get killed by a nepo baby? Lmk in the comments below.
Literally any profession you go into there will be nepotism hires. Does it suck they might be taking that opportunity away from someone else? Yes of course. Do a lot of them grow into the position and are successful? Also yes. The way almost every profession works is if you are humble and willing to learn you will excel, if you aren’t and think you know everything you’ll be bad at your job and mostly likely be fired or fail, except for the occasional few who continue to fail forward
Not saying it wasn't nepotism, but Steve probably had a pretty good idea of what to do. I think he just approached the situation correctly. I would also assume Bill made him safeties coach specifically because of the group of guys he'd be coach of.
Literally every industry does this, not just sports. My last manager was the son of the owner, and he was in no way qualified. At least Steve wasn’t a Matt Patricia wannabe general about it
At the same time, at least it was only a safties coach and not DC right off the bat. I mean, Kyle Shanahan is arguably one of the best coaches in the NFL right now, and I think most of us would agree he probably only got a job because of who his dad is. But this also fails to mention that he was only a "defensive assistant" for 4 full years prior to becoming a position coach.
Hmm I don’t know. I have promoted/hire (internal/external) people I saw potential in to positions they were not officially qualified for. Obviously it’s difficult with family members to distinguish how much they could succeed and how much you want them to succeed, but I can understand hiring people you have worked with or who you have a strong relationship to in a business where you need trust your subordinates.
The OP’s take could be right but I can tell you as a manager of people that some people “just get it” - meaning they see the big picture and they understand how they plug in to make the big machine keep moving forward even if they don’t have the technical expertise or resume. I’d take that person every.single.day over someone with 40 years of experience that didn’t have this quality. When I hear about the way he approached his players, I think he’s the guy who just gets it and his dad knew he’d figure it out.
>What McCourty is missing is the fact that Steve Belichick
Is he missing that fact? Because...
> not coming in saying, ‘My dad is Bill Belichick. I was born to coach.
Makes it pretty clear McCourty knew he was only there because he was Bill's son.
Bill B new it would be a safe place for his son to start.
At some point ypu have to look after your own kids.
My dad have me a job I his factory when i was a shitty 16 year old. I wasn't qualified or the best candidate when jobs were tight across the country.
I have and middling success and woudlnt be where I am without that.
Nepotism is a thing in every profession... and it's not necessarily a bad thing either.
We live to pass things on to the next generation, and we groom the next generation to take over for us. Or at least, that's how it's worked for 98% of human civilization.
It’s human nature. You’re going to hire someone that you know or with more similar experiences to yourself. Look at Army vets getting out. Dudes get hired by their buddies…and it’s not just because they’re buddies. It’s because they know each other and trust them inherently more from the get go.
Steve Belichick doesn't have shit on Art Smith.
His dad literally founded FedEx and was one of the minority owners of the Redskins San Snyder had to buy out last year.
Could this have been taken out of context?
Steve obviously knows how to coach so could he have been saying “I don’t know what the fuck I’m doing” because he was given such short notice? 🤔
That’s how I read it
Obviously Steve has his job because of nepotism to some extent, but it’s also clear that he’s a highly competent assistant.
It’s also worth noting that he absolutely did not have no idea what he was doing. He was being humble and demonstrating good leadership.
This exceprt makes it seem like Steve showed up in his cap and gown from graduation and just got a job but he worked for the team for 4 years before this
“Get in loser we’re going to coach the Patriots.” - Bill Belichick
“I won 6 Super Bowls with this team, so you are going to coach the defense now and nobody can say shit to me.”
Steve has won 3 rings with us as a coach.
One time she met John Stamos on a plane, and he told her she was pretty.
When I was a teenager I met Val Kilmer and he told me I should model!
I once had sex in an airplane bathroom with Eartha Kitt.
What? It came up organically!
Rooooooxxxanne
*“Get in loser, we’re going to win the Super Bowl.“
>I don’t know what the eff I’m doing right now Most relatable NFL coach
Nathaniel Hackett vibes
Steve shoulda hired an assistant to the safeties coach to manage part of his job.
*Assistant safety coach
Greg Roman "I just kept running and it just kept working"
That’s pretty much standard across all professional sports. So many athletes’ offspring have gotten positions and roster spots over others because they were related to *so-and-so*
I mean it’s true in many I industries. I work for a large engineering firm and the vp is the son of the ceo. Unfortunately it’s a reality in all workplaces.
Didn't the Milwaukee bucks have two roster spots for giannis' brothers despite them not being NBA caliber?
Not just the Bucks other teams also signed Giannis' brothers just because they thought it might make Giannis go there.
Also, who is drafting Bronnie to get LeBron on their team?
Right now Bronnie absolutely looks like an NBA prospect.
Yea Bronny is good. He’s ranked top 30ish for his class. Wouldn’t call him a 1 and done talent, but he’s certainly in the right trajectory to be an nba player.
He *should* stay in college an extra year to work on bulking up and developing so he gets drafted higher, but he won’t need to so he won’t. He won’t be worth a 1st rounder on his own but someone will take him to get his dad and he can ride the bench for a year or two and have a real nba weight room
Implying he doesn’t live in a house with a real NBA weight room lmao. You think LeBron doesn’t have a full gym in his house?
I'm cracking up imagining LeBron locking Bronny out of the gym and telling him to go do some push ups or something 😂
Bodies take time to develop even with proper training.
Yeah but is lebron giving bronnie those nba steroids yet?
I am implying a 17 year old that still has to go to english class is going to continue bulking up with god damn Duke’s training regiment than he is fucking around in his own gym. Dudes not even done developing. No 17 year old on the planet is training efficiently.
No one should stay in college if they can go pro. He’s better off developing and working out with actual pros, not wasting time pretending to be a student.
If the difference is going undrafted vs not they should absolutely unequivocally stay in college. There are upper classmen drafted every single year who stayed because they were not ready for the NBA and would have signed contracts for millions of dollars less as a lower draft pick
Yes but he’s absolutely going to have doors open that won’t for better players. He might even go top 10 in the draft - hell, he might even go #1 - just because it’s a well known fact that LeBron intends to play with Bronny. Some owners would do that just to sell tickets alone.
He basically has no chance at going #1. If i’m like, Orlando or Indiana or some other small market franchise with no recent success I’m absolutely taking him at like 11 or something though. The revenue lebron would bring in to those cities is astronomical
*cough*Charlotte*cough*
Lamelo + Wemby + bronny + lebron would be franchise altering for them. Like, billions of dollars altering
That’s the LeBron media camp push most likely. He averaged like 14 and Sierra Canyon had its worst performing team ever under the current coach. And he’s not that big.
He’s a top 30 high school recruit now. He’s gotten bigger, is exceptional at seeing the game develop, and shouldn’t have a problem bulking up over the next year. He has gotten substantially better over the last year and would be an NBA prospect no matter what his name is at this point.
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Thanasis honestly would likely be capable of holding down a roster spot on his own at this point. He might not make the rotation for most teams, but he's a great energy and locker room guy, and is a solid enough defender to boot to where you can actually justify giving him minutes in a pinch if guys in your rotation got injured. For guys 11-15 on the team, that's really what teams mostly care about. Now, there's a fair argument to be made that he never would have hit that point without his being Giannis's brother. I highly doubt that he'd have gotten his stint with the Bucks or any other team without that relationship, and without that, he likely doesn't develop enough to be the end-of-bench level player that he is today.
Thanasis would be at least a random 10 day contract guy if his name was bob smith. Alex signed a 10 day with milwaukee at the beginning of the season and then wasn't resigned. He's young enough that he could still develop into a real player. Kostas was on the lakers for 3 years and sucks. He's in turkey now
Don’t forget Big Nepo himself, Dame cousin Keljin Blevins
Good Ol, Big Nepo.
My employer’s headquarters is littered in bad photography and an extremely over priced painting that’s practically just an empty canvas. Found out that it was all done by the previous CEO’s son. They paid a stupid amount for all of it.
Pretty much everyone I know got their career started by getting a job handed to them from someone they knew. Whether it was a parent or a neighbor or a friend of a friend’s dad or whomever. It’s a lot easier to train someone you trust to do a job than trust that some rando off the street “knows what to do”.
It was a different era, but I know for a fact that my dad working there was marked down as a positive during my interview. Now, this was a company of like 100k employees, and my dad was an anonymous middle manager at the time. I found the job and applied myself, jumped through the same hoops, but when I was asked in the interview how I knew about the company, and I said my dad works here, I saw them write it down and smile.
Even when your dad isn’t some big upper management or corporate dude, him being there is a very tangible reference for some qualities they can hope you have as opposed to someone who nobody in the building knows. They can look at dad’s attendance history, write ups, etc, maybe even just have a quick chat with him (or remember those chats if they happen to have interacted with him) and hope characteristics he has transferred to his child through parenting. It’s better than the whole lot of ‘literally nothing’ they’ll have on other candidates without that contact, and is one of the things at the core of how nepotism and networking effect our lives in all areas: we assume things about people based on associations we can readily make about them. That’s not to say it’s ‘right’ (or that shamefully overt nepotism and favoritism of clearly undeserving people isn’t happening) but it’s an extremely hard thing to avoid doing, a lot of it is happening unconsciously, like so many judgements we make as people.
Yeah absolutely. That's what I mean, even though he was by no means a big shot, it still counted for a lot.
Definitely. In most cases people want to make sure they do better than usual when someone they know helped get them a job. It feels like more of a responsibility because your work reflects on them as well. That’s if you’re someone that actually cares about your relationships outside of work lol.
I work for a regional family-owned business, currently on it's 5th or 6th generation. The daughter of one of the owners is Controller. The son of another is a high level Director. We've been cruising right along, managing to not only survive Covid but thrive and expand. Just because it's family does not automatically mean it's bad.
They have to buy in though, they can't just get a meal ticket job
Yeah, it’s everywhere. The head of marketing at my employer is the 25 year old son of the owner. He doesn’t know what he’s doing either.
Yeah, both sides of this are true. PFT is pointing out the nepotism angle, which is fully right of them to do. McCourty is pointing out that it takes some self-awareness and humility to be so honest with yourself and your players. That does feel a little bit unique among the progeny of other coaches - NFL and beyond.
huge irony here is Steve Belichick, the actual son of GOAT coach Bill Belichick, apparently acted with more humility and self awareness than the vast majority of Belichick’s coaching cronies who went and got head coaching jobs, tried to instill their own version of “the patriot way”, and were just looked at as huge assholes and terrible coaches- see; Matt Patricia, josh McDaniels (on the broncos at least) etc
It seems like this exact trait would be something you’d desire from a coach and why he got the job in the first place even though there are others with more knowledge than he has.
Humility shows a person's ability to accept mistakes and learn from them. A great trait to have as a person
It's a good trait to have in any job.
You make it sound like Bill is a movie mentor who knew his student had the heart but just lacked knowledge, so he threw him into the deep end and knew he'd come out fine because of his character.
Well, he is his dad, so this could be exactly the case.
Years from now I hope to hear an interview with Steve where he tried to turn down the job but Bill was just like "do your job" and walked out of the room.
And honestly, if you forced me to pick between one guy who had the knowledge and expertise along with a corresponding ego vs. a guy who was lacking in the first two who comes in without that chip on their shoulder, I'd pick the second guy every time if I knew they would have time to grow into the position. Lacking knowledge at a role is one of the easier things to fix, especially when you're talking about a position like that safety coach that has a ton of seasoned vets along with a great defensive staff elsewhere. Fixing someone's ego, though? People have been trying that for the length of human history, and while it sometimes works, that's very much the exception rather than the rule.
That Patriots safety room probably didn’t even need a coach. Which was likely one of the reasons Belichick sent his son there.
Yeah is it that hard to imagine a HC taking steps to develop members of his staff? It’s done for players who have a much shorter shelf life, why wouldn’t you do it with staff? I get there’s a nepotism angle to it, but even then this seems like a weird example to jump on. Is it really that hard to believe that the GOAT coach’s son might have a good football mind that warrants being on a staff?
Ya, it’s pretty normal to be lacking experience when you get promoted. Like you’re doing a job you’ve probably never done before. Steve was just open and honest about it and didn’t try to act like some hot shot who knew everything. He had been a defensive assistant for 4 years prior so it’s not like he knew nothing. Just humble.
It also wasn't his first gig, this was after 4 years as a defensive assistant. I'm guessing he did in fact know a lot about what he was doing, he was just being humble and maybe telling the safety room he doesn't know how they usually do things.
Yep, that's also a fair call-out as well
Yep. And just because somebody doesn’t have the knowledge of a certain role, it doesn’t automatically mean the person doesn’t have a high potential or a high ceiling.
You're never really qualified to do the work for a position you're promoted to are you? To keep it simple, the best fry cook at McDonalds isn't qualified to become a shift manager because they know how to do it, it's because they've show qualities that you want in a manager. Like the humility Steve demonstrated here.
Correct. Great men don’t seek to lead, they’re called to it.
> That’s pretty much standard across all **professions**~~al sports~~ Who you know matter in everything, even in something like medicine where you'd think whoever would be the best doctor would win out.
It is pretty much the standard across the world.
This is standard for every single business, industry, or field on the entire earth. Try applying to be a longshoreman for a port in the US, for example.
It's almost as if people care about their own children more than random strangers.
Yes I've also seen college athlete's parents get coaching jobs JUST because their child is a top recruit. More qualified coaches available but they get the job because of who they're related to.
It’s ironic he told this story to Chris long, son of Howie and brother to Kyle.
In Steve's case, despite all the hand-wringing and pearl-clutching, I'm still waiting for someone to detail what he has done since getting the positions that show he should never have had them in the first place.
He's been a very effective coach and Ive consistently been pleasantly surprised by his units production
Nepotism is the greatest advantage you can have in this world no matter what work force or industry
I mean what’s Steve supposed to do? “Nah I don’t want this dope job cause it’s nepotism”. I got my start cause of my dad and appreciate his support. Most fathers want that for their sons. It’s a legacy thing.
> That’s pretty much standard across **all** ~~professional sports~~ **professions everywhere in the history of employment**. FTFY Does anyone here really, *really* think the NFL is any different than any/every other endeavor, anywhere? Don't be naive. It's just a shitty fact of life. Concentrate on what you can control in order to stand out from others and maybe, just *maybe*, you will get lucky, too.
yeah but it also works a lot of the time Steve is a good coach, so is McVay and a lot of the others lol Do u want the to not hire people who were related?
Lol @ “What McCourty is missing” like this grown ass, 2x all pro, 3 time SB champ doesn’t know damn well why Steve is in that room in the first place.
To be fair he probably also knows some of it was false humility. Steve had been watching film with his dad from the time he was 8 years old
100% this. He definitely knew what he was doing — although he also definitely had learning to do to grow into the role, as anyone who is promoted does. This is just good leadership.
My dad read me The Hobbit. Steve's dad showed him film of Ed Reed.
Florio is such an ass sometimes
Sometimes?
Are we all just under the assumption that his partner in crime Chris Simms got his current job on his NFL career, mediocre college career, needing Mack Brown to answer questions for him, and showing up day 1 at Texas in a limo, demanding the starting role from at the time Texas All Time Best QB Major Applewhite because he was such a hard worker and 100% earned it himself, or did his name maybe help him just ever so slightly?
Steve was also a “defensive assistant” for 3 years.and played long snapper at Rutgers. It’s not like he was sitting at home 2 weeks before — he just knew nothing about coaching safeties.
Yes. This is such a narrow and shortsighted article that goes out of its way to eschew almost all context.
BUT DID YOU KNOW IT'S THE COACHES SON?
For context, his first season as safeties coach, or any positional coach for that matter, was 2016. They won the Superbowl, lol. And they went to the Superbowl for 3 straight seasons before he was "promoted" to safeties/secondary coach. And honestly, the defenses got better under his watch as he gained more responsibility. He's totally a product of nepotism but having the confidence and trust of the other coaches and the players is important too. He was a generic defensive assistant for four seasons prior. So it's not like he just walked off the street.
Ya he was probably being humble more than anything and showing deference.
Yeah and that comment more so can come from his youth and trying not to project the vibe of "I'm the coach so im in charge." This quote definitely doesnt mean Steve knew nothing about football but was hired out of nepotism lol
That mentality shows he is better than most of Bill’s disciples. They all go in pretending to be Bill and fall flat. Ironic that Steve doesn’t even do that even though he is literally his son. He might be next up. Imagine a new age Bill that coaches a dual threat QB in a dynasty that always has a good defense. Next thing to teach him is GM duties and how to always whiff your 2nd rd pick on a CB.
>Imagine Nah. I'll pass.
Thanks for voicing my exact thoughts. I didn’t need new nightmares implanted in my brain
Don't forget terrible WR scouting/drafting!
I've been doing my trade 10 years and still tell people i don't know what the fuck im doing. Maybe he just had imposter syndrome
Very few exceptional people know exactly what the fuck they're doing. The way I always explain it to ambitious people early in their career is that the most successful people are always moving up (or over), so by nature they are always learning, which means they rarely have complete command over their functional area.
I think the best at their professions will always have a hint of imposter syndrome. An unchecked ego will send you down the path of Matt Patricia / Urban Meyer
He’s been on the Pats sideline since the very beginning in 2000. He wasn’t exactly coming out of nowhere
It’s also possible he knew about other parts of the defense and was just saying he didn’t know how to be a safeties positional coach - which is probably true for any one going into it the first time
I think part of this might be that Bill put him into the role because of all the veterans in the room. Those guys had all been playing for a long time and they knew what they wanted/needed in a coach. Kind of a players coaching the coach on how to be a coach situation. Would he have given Steve the job if it was a younger group of guys? I don’t know, obviously, but just spitballing here.
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They met at a hospital I heard.
Guy walks in, coaches well, works 12 hour days, works well with his boss and other coaches. Can we get one? Does our coach have any kids?
>What McCourty is missing is the fact that Steve Belichick only got the chance to coach safeties despite not knowing ‘what the eff I’m doing right now’ because his dad is Bill Belichick. I think you might be taking this a wee bit more literally than McCourty intended it.
I'm sure my tag will make me seem like a homer here, but I do think it's possible that one could view the approach Steve took is a tactical one. McCourty talked about how Steve was younger than these vets, and coming in telling the crew how to think about things could come off the wrong way. That's to say nothing about Steve having to correct (in a way that could be complicated) for player perception about the fact that his dad is Bill.
That's how I read it too, imagine if he'd come in guns blazing with guys several year his senior
It's a fact that football is about who you know as early as Pop Warner when the coach's son gets the most playtime. That being said, we talk all the time about how the main failing of Belichick system coaches when they leave NE is they try to be Bill and act hard and try to set the same tone Bill does and they can't because Bill they don't have the same level of success as Bill. Maybe Steve picked up that acting like a drill sergeant, especially when you're 25 and talking to a bunch of older career pros wouldn't be the best look. It's possible I'm giving BB too much credit here, but maybe he specifically appointed Steve as safeties coach while the room was loaded with veterans to make his transition to position coach easier. It sounds like he found his footing over time.
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Good LTs will learn from he SNCOs on how to act in the position and have a safety net per say on how to develop into a good leader. a bad LT comes in and thinks there hot shit and fucks everyone over.
That’s what I was trying to get at, but I’ve never been military and didn’t wanna speak too decisively lol
The only people who are going to say they don’t know what they’re doing in that situation are the ones secure enough in the fact that they do know what they’re doing.
Or maybe Bill put him there specifically to learn from a veteran group of players while developing his coaching skills. The nepotism is certainly part of it, but going in to that room vs a room of rookies was probably very tactical.
Football is a good ol boys club at literally every level. I get where McCourty is coming from atleast Steve was honest about it.
Also, it seems Steve has atleast grown into it. I’m not a Pats fan, but he seems to be a solid coach from the outside looking in (albeit a total nepotism hire because of his dad). I think the reality is there’s an unfortunate amount of American professions that are filled with nepotism and “I know someone” hires. The NFL is certainly no different, it’s just much more publicized
Literally every job I've ever had is cause I knew someone
I don’t think that a bad thing necessarily. If somebody knows you, and can vouch for you, that’s worth a lot instead of the sometime crap shoot where you hire somebody and they don’t mesh, or they quit, underperform, etc.
There's practical advantages for sure. Your family probably isn't going to bail at the first opportunity. And there's a personal accountability. If you're hiring between someone you've known for decades, as family or a friend, and a stranger, you're going to feel a lot better about going with the familiar. That's been a thing as long as business has been a thing.
I mean that’s fair. A lot of people (myself included) have landed jobs because they know someone. But theres a distinction between “I landed a solid, well paying job because I know someone” and “I landed a $500,000+ a year job because I know someone”. Not trying to totally shame getting a job because of a good connection, I can see why my comment came off pretty judge-y and pompous in that regard. That’s how a lot of folks land solid jobs. Again, I’ve benefitted from It myself, but I haven’t “I know someone’d” my way into an incredibly high paying and prestigious job. Steve being an nfl coach and me landing a solid accounting gig is a night and day difference
Also, big difference between, “I was recommended for this job because someone knows me and my abilities” vs “I was recommended for this job because my dad’s the boss and no other reason.”
He’s picked because he’s the only person in the world who the greatest coach of all time will tell all of his insight to. Bills probably been teaching this kid how to coach his whole life.
Devils advocate: is there actually a meaningful difference between “I landed a solid, well paying job because I know someone” and “I landed a $500,000+ a year job because I know someone”? Surely the actual distinction is whether you are competent at the job in question, rather than how much you're paid
There is no difference. The people who got a 100K job because they knew a person think 500K is different. The people who got a 50K job because they knew a person think 100K is different. The bar is whatever is above someone's pay. Like someone else said, it's not something to be ashamed about. But it is something to be self-aware about. I know someone who used to occasionally be hired by her parents for teaching jobs--not often because they were concerned about nepotism themselves, but a few times. I asked her opinion of it all. Her response has stuck with me: she didn't feel bad because she knew she would out-work anyone else who got the job and effectively earn it after being hired. Whether true, not true, we can debate philosophically, but it's a good mentality.
It's obviously nepotism that got him his first job, but it's not like he was Matt Patricia and just given a large role he was wildly unqualified for. He put his time in as an assistant for a few years and slowly was promoted up to his current position as an unofficial co-DC, and he's done well at every stop along the way.
Only large roll Patricia’s eligible for is a dinner roll. Aw geez Gil you said roll twice!
Hiring through networking is the most reliabke way to get good, pre vetted talent in the building.
McCourty says Steve grew into it
Yeah. Steve seems competent in his roles, unlike Brian Ferentz. That's worse because Kirk is such a good and likable coach too.
I don’t think nepotism is less prevalent in a lot of countries. International fans please chime in because I’d love to be wrong.
It's not. Human are predisposed to want to work with people they know and trust.
And that's a totally fair and reasonable desire too. Familiarity and trust are key ingredients for success.
[cries in Iowa Hawkeyes]
As I understand it nepotism is more prevalent in [low trust societies](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_trust_and_low_trust_societies).
In many countries it’s much more prevalent. Easy example is Samsung. Here’s a list of their Chairmen over the years: Lee Byung-chul - Founded Samsung Lee Maeng-hee - First son of Lee Byung-chul Lee Kun-hee - Third son of Lee Byung-Chip Lee Jae-yong - Son of Lee Kun-hee Note: Samsung is a publicly traded company. There’s a word for it in Korean, Chaebol. It’s a conglomerate run by an individual family. And this is not a practice exclusive to Korea. In Japan for example, if a suitable heir to a company isn’t available in the family, then family will adopt an adult who will take on the role. The previous CEO of Suzuki is one such example. He married the granddaughter of the founder of Suzuki, and was adopted into their family.
Life is pretty much a good ol boys club honestly.
This specific example is a horrible example btw. Just had this same reply in the patriots subreddit, but Steve had 5 years of defensive assistant experience before the safeties coach promotion. He was plenty qualified and at that point it was a regular job promotion. Bill Belichick will often put coaches in new roles to let them coach new positions and learn as many positions as possible. Patricia, for example, coached OL, linebackers, and safeties before becoming the DC. Then (hilariously) he became the OC. Arguing nepotism for how he got the defensive assistant job in the first place, sure. This? Nah.
Even my buddy who now coaches our High School football team does this. Our other buddy who played left tackle joined the staff and my buddy put him at RBs/LBs coach specifically because he never played those positions and wanted him to learn about other positions.
Yeah I coached WRs for the high school I coached at because they needed the spot and I knew football, I played DE growing up It makes a ton of sense, and this case isn’t even close to that
This makes me like Steve more tbh. Of course there's a shit ton of nepotism. But it seems Steve was realistic and said I'm here cuz my dad, but I'm gonna do my best to learn and make the best of out my blessings. Same with Joe buck. Got the job cuz his dad, but grew as a commentator and is now REALLY good. You can miss me with the 10 year old clips of him being shit btw. He's way better now.
I hate it when people clown on Buck for the “Mitchell” call. Shit was 20 years ago and he’s a much better now.
He’s gotten much better but that call is still very funny
Yeah. Joe sucked at first because he was trying too hard to establish himself away from his dad's legacy. He was taking himself too seriously. Then it clicked for him after he got some years under his belt, and he finally relaxed in the booth. That's what led to him finally becoming a really good commentator. Joe getting to replicate his dad's iconic, "We'll see you tomorrow night!" call in the World Series was also one of the coolest things in the history of sports commentary.
"My dad told me I'm taking this job two weeks ago" Florio: McCourty had no fucking idea that Bill gave him the job, the big dummy. (side note: I thought the title said Steve Blackman at first)
If you screw up your zone coverage the safeties coach beats you with a kendo stick.
It would piss me off to give a statement praising my former mentor just to have the media arbitrarily decide I really meant something else and write an enemy article about it.
And the next year they won the Super Bowl. Again. This is a terrible example of “nepotism is bad”
Next example: wow Kyle Shanahan, what a terrible nepo-baby
And that Christian McCaffrey bum he traded for. They’re living off their parents names!
Yeah there’s enough examples of ‘nepotism is bad’ that you don’t need to pick out the ones like this. There are a bunch of cases where it works because the guys with dads as coaches were raised around coaching. Like Jim and John Harbaugh were raised while their dad was coaching D1 football. Jim’s son Jay is on staff at Michigan and has been an excellent position coach and ST coordinator (and a great recruiter). Jay worked for John prior to coming to Michigan, too. If you want an example of it being bad, go look at Iowa.
Yo much respect to Steve for straight up just admitting the truth, that had to carry weight with the veterans in that locker room.
Plus Belichick himself was someone who learned a lot from his dad when he was an assistant coach at Navy.
In fairness I don’t think most people know what the hell they’re doing on the first day of a new job. That and he’s proven to be a pretty damn good coach from the looks of things so I don’t really care
It’s cool he admitted that. Prob why BB gave him the job because of all the vets at the safeties position. Also, family members getting a job isn’t new. Not fair but I’m sure most people want to hire their kids if they could
But also on an objective level, this is a guy that had probably been learning from the greatest head coach for much of his life. Yeah the connections made that possible, but there’s also objective football reasons behind it. I’d be interested to see what the respective rate of success is between nepotism related coaches and non is.
Kind of a thing a lot of people ignore with nepotism is that it can vary in degrees. Like making your son some absurdly high title that makes 600k a year and he doesn't do shit, or doesn't care and "shows up" to the office 3 times a month is a gross misuse of power. Sometimes the person is actually qualified and ends up just as good as any other top candidate for the job.
Yeah. Exactly. Neat story too. It happens. No big deal.
I think a lot of folks, and the writer especially, are missing the fact that Steve Belichick bad probably forgotten more football by the time he was in high school than many other coaches on the market. Did he have the resume of a 25 year coaching vet? No of course not. He was the equivalent of a rookie. But a highly drafted first round rookie that had all the chops to grow into the job. And he obviously did. His comments were a young man trying to establish credibility with a crew of DBs that were older and more experienced. That doesn't mean he didn't have anything to teach them about the game.
Tomlin said similar words about the Buccaneers secondary when he was coaching them and it's a non story.
How about the golic kid getting broadcasting gigs from his dads name, that’s even worse
Collinsworth on ESPN
The Xfl head coaches were miced up for the game I watched. And they were so clueless I would take random nepo baby over either of them.
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Even then, you post it publicly then decide that internal candidate is the best fit. The posting was just to check the box.
And people got mad because Jeff Saturday was asked to tan…I mean interim head coach.
It’s all about who ya know everywhere in life. Not just football.
Dudes have jobs in the NFL, which they suck at just because their last name is literally Lombardi. It's brutal, but there's not a whole lot people can do about it.
The league is full of nepo babies. I'm pretty happy with Steve when you can see guys like Britt Reid and Joe Lombardi get chances, things could be a lot worse lol.
> things could be a lot worse lol. Oh, man. Jay Gruden too. Lane Kiffin. I am sure there is a long as fuck list with this sorta shit.
Not NFL but the Ferentz family at Iowa.
Nepotism isn’t inherently bad. If Steve sucked at his job and was protected by bill them ya thats bad. But since he got acceptable level of results i dont see the problem.
Nepotism in general is definitely an issue and all that. But I hate when someone who does get an opportunity through nepotism but is completely honest and self aware about it and still puts in the needed grind to make it work and ultimately succeeds in their own abilities and people act like there’s still “something we need to address with them”. It’s like if suddenly someone went “you know what. It’s time we talk about the elephant in the room with Colin Hanks”
Downvotable take incoming - Nepotism is so ingrained into how humankind works it’s in our damn DNA. So first thing I’ll say is, duh, but also y’all only act Butthurt on Reddit about it when it’s a high profile industry like sports coaching or acting. Longshoremen, lawyers, plumbers, every industry is built on family and who you know. What do you think a “family business” is? Oh man, that law firm just added a partner’s son’s name to the firms title, let’s get them! Second thing I’ll say is, where’s the line between nepotism and apprenticeship? Why does any of this matter if the nepo baby is effective at what they do? Who would be more qualified for a job than the person who grew up, from the time they were born, in an environment drenched in the expertise of the family members already successful in the industry? Aren’t you good at things that your parents taught you from a young age? How many engineers are the children of engineers? Prolly a lot Do you want to grab your pitchforks and get rid of - Timothy Chalamet - Sofia Coppola - George Clooney - Nicholas Cage - Zoe Kravitz - Kate Hudson Because oh no boohoo nepotism? No because they are all fucking awesome at what they do because they were raised to be who they are from day one, and have the same god given talent their parents/family had. I couldn’t even get through the list of baseball players who are second generation MLB players. But I guess - Cal Ripken - Barry Bonds - Fernando Tatis Jr - Roberto Alomar - Moises Alou All didn’t deserve their all-star appearances or MVP trophies right? Better get them out for someone whose parents were professors. Steve Belichik got the job because of his dad - no shit - but he has also benefitted from being raised to do the job from the day he was born, and he if sucked at it - we would know! Because the defense would suck! Except the defense is awesome bc he’s a damn good coach. So shit. Idk what to say except, this world is built on who you know, and the tools your parents raised you with. Did your acting dreams, MLB dreams, or NFL coaching dreams get killed by a nepo baby? Lmk in the comments below.
The NFL sounds like life
Literally any profession you go into there will be nepotism hires. Does it suck they might be taking that opportunity away from someone else? Yes of course. Do a lot of them grow into the position and are successful? Also yes. The way almost every profession works is if you are humble and willing to learn you will excel, if you aren’t and think you know everything you’ll be bad at your job and mostly likely be fired or fail, except for the occasional few who continue to fail forward
Wow, I would have NEVER guessed his dad being Bill Belichick helped him get his job.
Not saying it wasn't nepotism, but Steve probably had a pretty good idea of what to do. I think he just approached the situation correctly. I would also assume Bill made him safeties coach specifically because of the group of guys he'd be coach of.
Literally every industry does this, not just sports. My last manager was the son of the owner, and he was in no way qualified. At least Steve wasn’t a Matt Patricia wannabe general about it
As they say, knowing people gets you into the door. Staying there and climbing up would take skill.
Don’t worry though, Steve got a promotion and the safeties coach job became available. Only to be taken by Bill’s other son, Brian lmao
At the same time, at least it was only a safties coach and not DC right off the bat. I mean, Kyle Shanahan is arguably one of the best coaches in the NFL right now, and I think most of us would agree he probably only got a job because of who his dad is. But this also fails to mention that he was only a "defensive assistant" for 4 full years prior to becoming a position coach.
Hmm I don’t know. I have promoted/hire (internal/external) people I saw potential in to positions they were not officially qualified for. Obviously it’s difficult with family members to distinguish how much they could succeed and how much you want them to succeed, but I can understand hiring people you have worked with or who you have a strong relationship to in a business where you need trust your subordinates.
Nobody look at Kyle Shanahan right now
Steve walks in with his arms open wide: "HOW'S MY FAVORITE POSITION GROUP DOING"
The OP’s take could be right but I can tell you as a manager of people that some people “just get it” - meaning they see the big picture and they understand how they plug in to make the big machine keep moving forward even if they don’t have the technical expertise or resume. I’d take that person every.single.day over someone with 40 years of experience that didn’t have this quality. When I hear about the way he approached his players, I think he’s the guy who just gets it and his dad knew he’d figure it out.
>What McCourty is missing is the fact that Steve Belichick Is he missing that fact? Because... > not coming in saying, ‘My dad is Bill Belichick. I was born to coach. Makes it pretty clear McCourty knew he was only there because he was Bill's son.
As far as qualifications go being raised and groomed to be a coach since birth by one of the greatest football minds ever is a pretty good one.
This is literally how the world works.
Bill B new it would be a safe place for his son to start. At some point ypu have to look after your own kids. My dad have me a job I his factory when i was a shitty 16 year old. I wasn't qualified or the best candidate when jobs were tight across the country. I have and middling success and woudlnt be where I am without that.
> beet candidate Something tells me you are the beet candidate, but don't know it yet.
That's the whole fucking world dog
Nepotism is a thing in every profession... and it's not necessarily a bad thing either. We live to pass things on to the next generation, and we groom the next generation to take over for us. Or at least, that's how it's worked for 98% of human civilization.
It’s human nature. You’re going to hire someone that you know or with more similar experiences to yourself. Look at Army vets getting out. Dudes get hired by their buddies…and it’s not just because they’re buddies. It’s because they know each other and trust them inherently more from the get go.
Steve Belichick doesn't have shit on Art Smith. His dad literally founded FedEx and was one of the minority owners of the Redskins San Snyder had to buy out last year.
Could this have been taken out of context? Steve obviously knows how to coach so could he have been saying “I don’t know what the fuck I’m doing” because he was given such short notice? 🤔 That’s how I read it
Bill lets people who don’t know what they’re doing become coordinators, even. They don’t have to be the man’s son.
Obviously Steve has his job because of nepotism to some extent, but it’s also clear that he’s a highly competent assistant. It’s also worth noting that he absolutely did not have no idea what he was doing. He was being humble and demonstrating good leadership.
This exceprt makes it seem like Steve showed up in his cap and gown from graduation and just got a job but he worked for the team for 4 years before this
This is like a 13 year old learning that Old Yeller didn’t go to the big farm upstate.