Here's how Bill Belichick uses the off season to prepare assistants for head coaching roles

For the most part, the verdict is still out on the success of Bill Belichick's coaching tree, but one thing that cannot be denied is the infatuation that NFL executives have with hiring those that have worked for Belichick.

Matt Patricia and Josh McDaniels are two recent examples of coordinators that had a lot of hype who got an opportunity to run their own team and it didn't end well. Both have ended up back in Foxboro working for Belichick.

Some other well known branches of the Belichick tree include Charlie Weiss, Romeo Crennel, Eric Mangini, and Bill O'Brien.

Regardless of the overall track record that the limbs of the coaching tree have, Belichick's ability to prepare guys to nail their head coaching interviews for a shot at their own team is as impressive as any coach in the game.

Heading into the 2020 season, the Giants became one of the latest teams to tab a Belichick assistant in Joe Judge. In his first year at the helm, Judge led the team to a 6-10 finish.

Giants beat reporter for the Athletic Dan Duggan tweeted a screenshot from a piece where he recently profiled Belichick's process for preparing those working under him. 

That process started in the off season with seminars for those hungry to learn what he feels is important to the head coaching role.

Over the course of the off season Belichick would sit with those eager to learn the ins and outs of being an NFL head coach two to three times per week, and in season he would have those meetings less often, but still periodically. The length of these private seminar sessions would range anywhere from a half hour to five hours long.

"That was years of experience that was given to us in a classroom format," Judge shares in the piece.

"Like, 'Here are the things you're going to encounter. Here are different ways of doing it. You've got to pick your own way you want to do it, but here are the strengths of one way, here are the differences of another."

Another emphasis in those meetings, Judge shared, was different methods of building a team.

If there is one common thread of criticism that has seemed to be echoed across each of the hires from the Belichick tree, including Judge, it is that they seem too focused on replicating Belichick's process. 

The insight from Duggan via Judge throws some significant water on that argument, as those mini-seminars cover a lot of different approaches with the pros and cons laid out about each one.