Bill Belichick doesn’t always get along well with the media. But he’s also one of them.
The New England Patriots head coach took his team on a field trip to NFL Films headquarters in Mount Laurel, N.J., on Tuesday after a joint practice session with the Philadelphia Eagles, per ESPN’s Mike Reiss.
NFL Films is where Belichick spent part of the 2019 offseason as a co-host of NFL Network’s “NFL 100 All-Time Team” series, which counted down the 100 greatest players in league history.
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Belichick enjoyed the experience immensely, and apparently he did a decent job in his analyst role: The longtime head coach was presented with a Sports Emmy on Tuesday for his efforts on the show.
Belichick’s right-hand man, Patriots director of football/head coach administration Berj Najarian, also shared an Instagram photo of the head coach with his hardware alongside NFL Films producer Ken Rodgers.
Belichick winning an award for excellence in media doesn’t seem on-brand with his brusque press conference persona, but in context, it’s not at all surprising. The 69-year-old coach has a deep appreciation for football history and often will light up when discussing players and tactics of decades past.
“Oh, I learned a lot. It was a great experience,” Belichick said in November 2019 of working on the NFL 100 project.
“I watched a lot of film of players in the (19)30s, the 40s, the 50s and the 60s … and it was very enlightening studying the great players in different eras and how the game was played.”
His enthusiasm for the project clearly showed, and as a result, Belichick now can add a Sports Emmy somewhere in his trophy case alongside those eight Lombardi Trophies (six with the Patriots and two with the New York Giants as a defensive coordinator).