The Art of Winning by Bill Belichick, review

The Art of Winning is aimed less at aspiring coaches than at managers and executives, with chapters on Communication, Preparation, and Culture. The premise is familiar: take lessons from life in the NFL and apply them to life in the office.

Alongside his leadership insights, Belichick includes stories from his coaching career and pays tribute to major influences – his father Steve Belichick, mentor Bill Parcells, and quarterback Tom Brady. He mostly sidesteps controversy: Spygate isn’t mentioned, and Deflategate doesn’t appear. But he’s candid about his own missteps.

If you’ve spent the past two decades wondering what made Belichick’s Patriots so tough to beat, there’s plenty to chew on here.

THE AUTHOR

Bill Belichick is a legendary coach who won six Super Bowls as head coach of the New England Patriots and another two as an assistant coach with the New York Giants. He has been NFL Coach of the Year three times and is a member of the NFL’s 2000s All-Decade Team, 2010s All-Decade Team, and the 100th Anniversary All-Time Team. The Art of Winning is his first book.

EXCERPTS

“Above all, do not beat yourself— you cannot win until you keep from losing.”

“Fans love locker room speeches. They love to see a doughy old coach hop up on a folding chair at halftime and shout nonsense to a group of grown men. Players could be spending that precious time conferring with their teammates or unit coaches about second-half adjustments, or thinking about what they will do when they get back out on the field. And instead the time is spent on someone else trying to make a point. Everyone eats it up. I don’t know why.”

“If somebody uses Al to summarize this book down to three essential words, I hope they are: Don’t. Commit. Penalties.”

“If my goal was to not be wrong, l would have called a time-out. But that was not my goal (and never will be my goal). My goal was to beat the Seattle Seahawks and win the championship. That goal was unwavering, and, as a result, my focus was not on mathematics or on my reputation but on something closer: the sideline of the Seattle Seahawks. What I saw across the field gave me everything I needed to know to decide on my next play, which, in that moment, was not to make a time-out call but to challenge the Seahawks to execute the right play against our goal-line defense.”

“I admit that at times I have been uncooperative with the media.”

“If I had to pick one sentence that summarizes my coaching philosophy and how I evaluated myself in my job it would be this: “Practice execution becomes game reality.” My players have heard me say that hundreds of times—because it is the absolute truth.”

REVIEWS

As mentioned, this is fundamentally a business book. And like many business books, it offers mostly general lessons: hire well, prepare thoroughly, admit your mistakes. These are good principles, but hardly revelatory. Few readers will be surprised to hear that planning ahead is useful, or that surrounding yourself with smart people tends to work out.

The effort to draw parallels between coaching in the NFL and leading a business can feel strained. Sure, a 3rd-and-18 situation might be comparable to a work crisis, but how helpful is the comparison? And even people management in football, where careers are short and power structures rigid, feels unlike most office dynamics. So if you’re picking this up for professional self-improvement, you may leave underwhelmed.

But as a window into Belichick’s football brain, The Art of Winning is much more compelling. His famous “No days off!” mantra isn’t about performative toughness, it reflects his genuine obsession with the game. Football isn’t a job to him; it’s his favourite thing to do. That passion comes through. So does his personality. He’s skeptical of analytics. He rolls his eyes at modern players’ need for constant encouragement. And he still doesn’t enjoy talking to the press.

There are some good stories here too. He reflects on how he learned from mishandling Bernie Kosar’s departure in Cleveland, and recounts a strange episode involving Antonio Brown, Tom Brady, and some very expensive milk. More anecdotes would have been welcome, but this is a slim volume. And while Belichick is frank about his errors, he avoids the messier parts of his legacy: no Spygate, no Deflategate, no Robert Kraft.

The dream Belichick book—the one coaches and football nerds would devour—would be his version of Finding the Winning Edge, a detailed account of his systems, schemes and philosophies. That’s not this book. This is his The Score Takes Care of Itself, Bill Walsh’s leadership-minded memoir, published after his death in 2009.

The Art of Winning isn’t essential, but it is valuable. And for now, it’s the only book Belichick has written. Here’s hoping it won’t be the last.
Shane Richmond, Pigskin Books

“Whatever you may think of Belichick or his latest adventures in dating or college coaching at North Carolina, the man demonstrably knows the most important single thing about organizational dynamics: how to build and sustain a great work culture. He outlines his methods, not with bromides but bricks and mortars, hiring and firing, reward and penalty.”
Sally Jenkins, Washington Post

“The Art of Winning: Lessons from My Life in Football” is intended for a mass audience. But at its core, Belichick is writing for a subset of a subset of a subset of football minds, the truly and spectacularly obsessed. They will find virtue in it, and in Belichick himself, even if they don’t like him — even if they have wondered, as many owners, GMs, and coaches have, if his system works when he’s not at the head of the table. Belichick writes that his program is “not for everyone. Neither am I. But to get to the top, and stay there, is close to impossibly hard.”
Seth Wickersham, ESPN

“And, intentional or not, there’s some self-aggrandizing that shows up as it would in a book written by someone who has enjoyed as much success as Belichick, though the book is more coaching manual and life advice than autobiography. It’s easy to see it becoming something like a bible to young coaches, with ground-level insight on game planning and high-level philosophy on running a football team.”
Daniel Ubben, The Athletic

“Belichick reveals the principles he developed over 49 years of coaching in the NFL. Though some are a little clichéd or well-worn. Look for excellence in the margins. Practice execution becomes game reality. Team, teammate, self — that one’s adapted from the Naval Academy.”
Ben Volin, Boston Globe

“Professional advice—and a handful of interesting stories—from a gridiron champion.”
Kirkus Reviews

Belichick’s lessons are solid and commonsense, and football fans will delight in the trivia and behind-the-scenes insights sprinkled throughout, even if the repeated shoutouts to his superstar quarterback, Tom Brady, can feel excessive. There’s nothing earth-shattering here, but sports fans looking for leadership advice will find some helpful pointers.
Publishers Weekly

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