With Bucs, Schiano Aided Belicheat
October 7th, 2015
Aiding the enemy?
Yes, Bucs fans, we all know how former Bucs commander Greg Schiano and Patriots coach Bill Belicheat are tight.
Schiano coached one of Belicheat’s sons at Rutgers and Belicheat advised Team Glazer to hire Schiano.
In fact, a few weeks after Schiano was dismissed by Team Glazer (in retrospect, Schiano was a fall guy for a lot of things out of his control), Schiano could be seen with Belicheat and Patriots front office staff working the NFL Scouting Combine.
It seems that despite being competing coaches in the NFL, that didn’t get in the way of the two’s friendship, both personal and professional. In fact, Mike Reiss of BSPN notes one reason for the success of the defending Super Bowl champions is due to advice Schiano gave Belicheat while with the Bucs.
The Bucs were one of the first teams to go all-digital when they bought iPads to give players. On the iPads, playbooks were downloaded and players could watch cut-up video on the devices. While Schiano initially did away with iPads, he grew to wrap his arms around them and told Belicheat he needed to embrace the technology.
“I’d say part of the confidence in that for me came from Coach Schiano in Tampa, because that’s the way he did it,” Belichick said on WEEI, answering a question from one of the hosts, Jerry Thornton. “A lot of our coaches felt comfortable with it. I had trouble turning the corner, but after talking to him and working with his staff, we exchanged some ideas that year together, and certainly trusted them to say, ‘Here’s what we did and this really wasn’t a problem; you’ll be all right with it.’ That gave me a lot more confidence to do it.
“Our IT person, Dan Famosi, did a great job implementing that. Probably without a little bit of a push from me, that probably wouldn’t have happened then.”
Belichick explained that the concept of switching playbooks to iPads sounded good in theory, but “there’s a big difference between somebody who’s a tech person that says, ‘This is going to be great’ versus somebody like Coach Schiano who actually is a football person who’s done it. When he says, ‘You can do this, you can do that, because I’ve done it and our staff does it and our players do it,’ that carries a lot more weight with me.”
There you have it folks; while coach of the Bucs, Schiano helped Belicheat and the Patriots become the team they are today.
iPads became so integral with teams that the NFL a couple of years ago signed a pact with Microsoft to use Surface tablets instead. Occasionally, on a sideline, you can see a coach breaking down a play on a Surface. Four years ago, that was considered groundbreaking. Now it is standard equipment.
October 7th, 2015 at 5:15 am
Bell-iCheat
October 7th, 2015 at 5:59 am
What coaches really love about the tablets, is the fact that they can see how much they are using them, at what time and what they watch on them. And in the case of lovie, I am sure you can play elevator music while watching tape to ensure that the player will be “passive” in Lovie’s “passive” defense!!!!!!
October 7th, 2015 at 6:10 am
Some credit to Raheem and his coaching staff, they were the first in the NFL to implement tablets for playbooks, and it sounds like if it were up to Schiano, they would not have even used them if they weren’t already in place.
October 7th, 2015 at 6:47 am
@T i Orlando
The Bucs were 1 of the first, I know the Baltimore Ravens started at the same time and I thought there was another team. As far as Coach Schiano, when he got here ipads were not being charged, nor updated and found games, and inappropriate web surfing.
I even remember Ernest Graham saying that some players were on facebook during meetings!!!
October 7th, 2015 at 7:11 am
Okay.
October 7th, 2015 at 7:37 am
The good news for all of us Bucs fans is Lovie says we are making progress after 20 games. This is a big relief. I thought we were going in the opposite direction.
October 7th, 2015 at 7:44 am
And there was no mention that he could coach rings around Lovie Smith in the article. Well he could.
October 7th, 2015 at 7:55 am
Great…now let’s just get a 6-foot tall ipad made with gameplay recognition software installed and have it capture any resemblance of coaching.
October 7th, 2015 at 8:21 am
The Pats were going to come around to them at some point anyway. Nothing to see here.
October 7th, 2015 at 9:13 am
Wow, the hatred of Greg Schiano lingers. I never could understand how he was made the scapegoat here in Tampa and was run out like he had the plague or something. I liked him and his style overall. The Bucs would be better right now had he stayed. Disagree all you want, I ain’t buying it. Bring him in to replace Lovie right now, The Bucs future would be brighter, not this slow motion meandering.
October 7th, 2015 at 9:35 am
With Schiano as HC the Bucs were kind of like the Pats AAA affiliate where call ups were down via trade: Blount, Wright as were demotions to the minors: Mankins….. Kind of like Tampa being the Expos of the NFL but not winning nearly as many games….
October 7th, 2015 at 9:52 am
Who honestly gives two squirts of piss about either of these guys or their relationship?
October 7th, 2015 at 11:24 am
…slow news day?…maybe you should antagonize switch your BUST “America’s QB”….the same way you played up your BUST GM “pop star”…
October 7th, 2015 at 11:34 am
Very astute of you. If I was a head coach this would certainly be part of my player evaluation and a requirement to be implemented as part of the application.
October 7th, 2015 at 12:49 pm
Traitor!!
Thats all I’ve got, and it wasnt with much gusto
October 7th, 2015 at 2:02 pm
@buccfan37
I’m really starting to think the hatred is a “Southern” thing? Schiano had that Jersey hard as$ “Work your butt off” demeanor that I think culturally didn’t mesh with a “typically” more relaxed Southern temperament. Yes this may seem stereotypical, but I honestly can’t think of a reason why so many things that were complete BS were fabricated about the guy to get him removed from coaching the Bucs? Team Captain vote rigging…BS, leaking Freeman medical records…BS, losing the locker room…BS, being a worse coach than Lovie (at least in Tampa)…BS. Talk about witch hunts!