Ernie Adams, the Bill Belichick to Bill Belichick

Have been reading up a bit on this guy, highly fascinating. A reputed genius and football savant, he's been with Belichick at nearly every single stop of his NFL coaching career and yet nobody can ever really recall what he did while he was there but Belichick considers him absolutely essential and he is regarded as Bill's closest advisor. Adams is involved in every facet of football, from gameplanning, scouting, the draft and more.








http://www.npr.org/2016/01/16/463290737/the-man-behind-the-patriots-curtain-who-s-ernie-adams

SIMON: Yeah, so what does he do during a game? What does he do for the team?

SHAUGHNESSY: Well, there's no question. During the games he's up in the booth with a headset and there's an emergency line down to the field with an orange piece of tape that says Ernie. It's a dedicated line for him. And if you see a controversial play or a play where they might dispute or throw the red bag to get a replay, those are carefully selected challenges. And Ernie, I believe, makes all the calls on those, like, this is worth the risk 'cause you lose a time out if you make the challenge and it's upheld. So if you go back - and there's an excellent NFL Films video from the Super Bowl last year and Ernie does speak a little bit in that. And it's pretty clear that he sniffed out the play that Pete Carroll ran from the one-yard line at the end of the game, which Malcolm Butler intercepted to win the Super Bowl. The Patriots had worked on that repeatedly on Friday...

SIMON: Oh, my.

SHAUGHNESSY: ...And basically knew it was coming. He is what, again, Halberstam called Belichick's Belichick. He's really the man behind the curtain there.

SIMON: And yet I gather Tom Brady barely knows him.

SHAUGHNESSY: Well, you talk to guys - I mean, Brady certainly knows the value there. And they're a very secretive organization, so they're not going to give up a lot anyway. I was fascinated by going back into Ernie's history, people he's worked for and just trying to get them to tell stories. And it was amazing, you know, talking to Phil Simms. And Ernie was his quarterback's coach and just...

SIMON: Phil Simms was quarterback for the New York Giants.

SHAUGHNESSY: (Laughter) Yeah.

SIMON: This is NPR, Dan. We have to fill in the blanks sometimes.

SHAUGHNESSY: (Laughter) I understand. Well, Bill Parcell is one of the legendary coaches in NFL history. I called Bill and, you know, 'cause saw in the press guides that Ernie was his pro player personnel director for a couple of years in the 1980s. And Bill could not remember anything about him. He says, I don't know the guy. I said, Bill, it says on the press guide that he was your director of pro personnel for two seasons when you were head coach. And he says, well, I don't remember the guy. So they're all either being very careful about it or Ernie just does not leave a personal mark with them.

Adams, who is officially listed as "football research director," is the man behind the Patriots' iron curtain. He is the man who has Belichick's ear. He is a football genius, a statistical savant, the Rain Man of the NFL. In the words of late author David Halberstam, Adams is "Belichick's Belichick.''

The magic game plan that beat the unbeatable St. Louis Rams in the Patriots' first Super Bowl win? Hiking the ball off your own goal post to win an unwinnable game in Denver? Skull-imploding substitution plays that paralyzed John Harbaugh in New England's playoff win over Baltimore? Adams's DNA is sprinkled over all Patriot strategy and trickeration. History and anecdotal evidence suggest that Adams would know a lot about the PSI of a pigskin.

Adams is Belichick's trusted football brother and confidant. He is like Robert Kennedy serving as attorney general for brother JFK in the New Frontier. He is Dick Cheney, behind the scenes with George W.

Who is the Patriots' true decider? We're never quite sure.

Asked to assess Adams's contribution to the Patriots' success, Belichick said, "Ernie's really a great sounding board for me personally and other members of our staff. Particularly coaching staff. Strategy, rules, decisions. Ernie's very, very smart. He has great historical perspective. Sometimes that comes into play.''

When Adams worked with Belichick in Cleveland, Browns owner Art Modell famously said, "I'll pay anyone here $10,000 if they can tell me what Ernie Adams does. I know he does something, and I know he works for me, and I know I pay him, but I'd love to know what it is.''

No one on the Cleveland staff came forward with information for the reward.

Hall of Fame coach Bill Parcells, when asked about Adams this week, was hard-pressed to recall anything about Adams even though Adams worked with the Tuna for six seasons.

"I can't really tell you anything about him,'' said Parcells. "I just don't know the guy.''

Informed that Adams was the New York Giants' "director of pro personnel" in 1983 and '84 — when Parcells was head coach of the team, Parcells said, "He was? I don't remember that. I don't remember him being on my staff.

"If he was on my coaching staff, I don't remember what he was doing. I don't have Alzheimer's. I have a pretty good memory, and I didn't have any interaction with him.''

It's a pattern of Adams's past. In the football world, Adams is tethered only to Belichick.

Adams works up to 100 hours per week during the season. He studies film, devours statistics, reports on trends, and develops strategies on 2-point conversions, fourth-down attempts, and timeout preservations. He runs the vaunted Patriot "value chart,'' helping Belichick on personnel decisions regarding free agents, trades, and the draft. He appears to be the voice inside Belichick's head for 60 minutes every Sunday, but no one will say for sure.

Oh and did you enjoy "Friday Night Lights"? Adams is the guy who told former Andover school chum Buzz Bissinger that Odessa, Texas would be a fine place to probe high school football.

"I really can't tell what Ernie's role is, but my guess would be he's an overseer,'' said former Giants quarterback Phil Simms, who studied under Adams in the 1980s. "Anything he sees relating to the football team, he relays that to Bill.

"I think it is a great source of information for Bill. There's nothing like somebody that can stand back and get a different view of what's going on.''

https://www.bostonglobe.com/sports/2015/01/29/mysterious-ernie-adams-patriots-man-behind-curtain/IrNCfgrysUphGpkcIjEaBL/story.html

Adams spent three years with the Patriots during his first stint in New England, where he pioneered much of the film-watching techniques now common in the NFL. "Let's say you wanted to put in a film on a team's goal-line defense," he says. "Someone would say, 'Here are all the goal-line plays.' Well, that was a very labor-intensive process with you physically taking the film from one play and splicing it in. We were the only ones doing it. Now it's standard and with digital a whole lot easier."

In 1979 he joined the Giants, reuniting with Belichick, who had been a prep-school teammate at Andover Academy in Massachusetts. Adams spent six years with the team, the first three as quarterback and receivers coach and the last three as pro personnel scout. He decided the latter job wasn't to his liking, despite the Giants' rise as one of the best teams in the league. So he went to work on Wall Street as a municipal bond trader for six years.

"I had a real interest in investments," Adams says, "so I took the job with the bond firm. I liked it — every day was competitive, and it was a different part of the world. But it became a combination of enjoying it and missing football at the same time, so when I had a chance to go with Bill in 1991 when he was named coach of the Cleveland Browns, I jumped at it."

Adams spent five years with the Browns, coaching the tight ends and running backs, but when Belichick was fired in 1996, Adams took another break from the NFL, opening his own investment business.

Belichick says he wasn't surprised that Adams, despite his love for the game, could leave it twice. "Those of us who know Ernie best understand that he is extremely well-rounded," the coach says. "He is one of the most educated, well-read and well-traveled people I have ever met. He is extremely knowledgeable in a number of areas, so his decision to pursue another field was perfectly reasonable to me. That said, I'm glad he decided to come back to football."

That decision came in 2000, when Belichick was named coach of the Patriots. A year later the team won its first Super Bowl, with Adams operating as a sort of ambassador without portfolio — basically, doing whatever his old friend needed him to do.

As the Patriots' success spawned intense interest in their methods, naturally people noted the influence this nondescript fellow had with the coach. That's when the who-the-hell-is-Ernie-Adams stories started appearing. Some Patriots players confessed they not only did not know what he did but also could not tell you his last name.

Today, Adams is called the Patriots' director of football research (he notes, with wry humor, that on his tax forms he puts his profession as "research"), but his roles are far greater than the title indicates. In addition to the many hours of breaking down film, he is up in the press box on game days, communicating frequently with Belichick as the game progresses. Once the season ends, he helps the Patriots prepare for the college draft, in which the team has done extremely well because of its meticulous scouting.

More than that, he is, as Halberstam wrote, "one of the very few men that Bill Belichick liked to test his own view of a game against, trusting completely Adams' truly original mind and his encyclopedic knowledge of the game. … They had been through a great deal together, playing next to each other on an unbeaten Andover team and then coaching together in New York, Cleveland and New England."

http://www.northwestern.edu/magazine/winter2008/feature/adams.html

Who, exactly, is Ernie Adams?

"I don't know what his job title is," linebacker Adalius Thomas says. "I didn't even know his last name was Adams."

"Ernie is a bit of a mystery to all of us," offensive tackle Matt Light says. "I'm not sure what Ernie does, but I'm sure whatever it is, he's good at it."

Finally, I approach receiver Wes Welker. "I'm writing a story about Ernie Adams," I tell him.

"Who?" he says.

"The guy who's always with Belichick who doesn't ever really talk."

"Oh," he says, recognition washing over his face. "Ernie."

He thinks for a second. "He's got to be a genius," he says, "because he looks like one."

http://www.espn.com/espn/eticket/story?page=adams

Adams will watch Stephen Gostkowski but he will not interact with the Patriots' affable young kicker. "Do Your Job" does not mean small talk with the players. Adams will save his observations for Belichick. Only Belichick.

"He doesn't talk to us,'' said Gostkowski. "I couldn't tell you what he does. No one knows.

"There's a lot of stories about him. I don't know what's true, but it's fun having him around. I always see him lurking, watching us warm up. In practice, he's always standing behind our snapper when he's snapping.

"He watches me before the game and gets a feel for my range, but it's never really talked about. Other than that, I just stay out of the way. I kind of just try to do my job and not ask any questions.''

"I never talked to him when I was a player,'' said Troy Brown, who played 15 years with the Patriots. "Now that I'm an ex-player we'll have a conversation once in a while. He's a really nice guy.''

When the game starts, Adams is upstairs in the booth with the Patriots' eye-in-the-sky team. He wears a headset. He has Belichick's ear. When the Patriots have allowed NFL Films to record some of Belichick's in-game dialogue, you hear a lot of, "What have we got, Ernie?''

Down on the field, the dedicated Ernie Hotline is available for Patriots assistant coaches. Or in case there's a scramble with Belichick's headset. The Ernie Hotline is the backup. In case of emergency. Belichick's lifeline.

Adams is the one who tells Belichick whether the Patriots should toss the red challenge flag after a questionable call. At halftime, Adams hustles downstairs with several other coaches and tells Belichick what needs to be done in the second half. The Patriots annually lead the league in effective second-half adjustments.

Adams and Belichick met in 1970. Adams had been at Phillips Academy in Andover, an elite New England boarding school, for three years. In that time, he'd become a campus legend, famous for his quirky attire and habits. He wore high-top cleats and old-fashioned clothes, looked and talked like something from the 1940s. His three obsessions were Latin, naval history and, strangely, football. So he consumed books, mostly obscure titles, with a scholar's thirst. One he ran across was called "Football Scouting Methods" by a Navy assistant coach named Steve Belichick. As Halberstam details in his biography of Belichick, "Education of a Coach," only about 400 people bought the book: professional scouts and 14-year-old Ernie Adams. So, imagine Adams' surprise when, as his senior year was beginning, he walked out onto the football field and encountered a young man with "Belichick" written on tape across the front of his helmet.

Bill Belichick had recently enrolled at Andover for a post-grad year, hoping to raise his grades and test scores so he could get into a good college. A few questions confirmed Adams' suspicions. Are you from Annapolis? Are you related to Steve? Yes and yes. Belichick thought it was strange that a kid would have read his dad's book. Adams recognized something familiar in Belichick. He recognized himself. "He actually was pretty good in his judgment of people," says Hale Sturges, the professor in charge of South Adams Hall, where Adams lived.

They've been like brothers ever since, spending hours after practice breaking down film, diagramming famous plays of Vince Lombardi, Adams' idol. They snuck into Boston College practices to "scout." Together, they played on the undefeated Andover team, the first time the two men tasted perfection.

When Adams granted access to Halberstam for the author's "The Education of a Coach,'' Halberstam described a team meeting in which "a giant photo of Adams had been punched up on the immense screen, instead of a play, and under it was written, 'What does this man do?' ''

The image of the nerdy, silent, ubiquitous man with the giant glasses no doubt inspired an outburst like the one that greeted the photo of legacy Kent Dorfman when Delta House leaders were vetting freshman pledges in "Animal House.''

He pauses a moment and looks out his hotel window thoughtfully, then continues: "There are books out there on the New England Patriots' master plan. The truth is, there is no master plan. You just show up every day and try to get a little better. And get players who will not put their ego above the team."

Adams got his first big break after college, starting as an administrative assistant with the Patriots in 1975 and landing an actual assistant coach's job with the New York Giants in 1979. Immediately, he told Giants coach Ray Perkins there was another young coach he should hire. Something in Adams' voice made Perkins listen. Adams was already a man who demanded trust; Perkins calls Adams' opinion on football "gospel." So, Perkins picked up his phone and set up a meeting. After three hours in a hotel room, he had his new special teams coach: Bill Belichick. "Ernie's recommendation opened a big door for Belichick," Perkins says.

http://www.espn.com/espn/eticket/story?page=adams

Adams' contributions to the Patriots begin with film. Hours and hours of film, often in his darkened office. He has been doing this for years, first at Northwestern in the early 1970s, where he convinced coaches to let him go from student-manager to scout. "He was a prodigy," says Rick Venturi, an assistant on that Wildcats team.

By now, after years of evolution, Adams sees film differently. Not just as random actions, but a genealogy of the game of football. When a defender moves, he recalls watching or having read about the first time a defender moved like that, even if it was 50 years ago, and he knows why, which tells him how to counteract the move. He has a photographic memory. Perkins tells a story of Adams' memorizing the Giants' thick playbook. In one night.

So, every week, the Patriots get the kind of analysis that only high-powered hedge funds or, say, NASA can afford. "Nine times out of 10," Bissinger says, "Ernie sees something nobody else sees."

That memory and those hours of studying film make him an unparalleled resource for assistant coaches. Want to know what a team does, and why? Want to know what a team has done on third-and-short in the red zone in the past 10 years on the road? Ask Adams. He'll know.

Adams' reach doesn't stop there. The Patriots are famous for compartmentalizing: The scouts can't watch practice, the game planners don't know who they are going to draft, and so on. But Adams is into everything. During the draft, according to Michael Holley's "Patriot Reign," he's in charge of running through the team's value chart, figuring out who will best fit their needs. This is the perfect assignment for someone who spent several years in the late 1980s as an analyst and trader on Wall Street and, as an investor, is known for spotting profitable trends shockingly early.

Pats owner Robert Kraft, a successful businessman in his own right, discusses economics with Adams. Belichick jokes that he wishes Adams would manage his portfolio. And the roots of the Patriots' insistence on value, and not letting emotion get in the way of sound investments, sound like they might have sprung from the mind of one Ernie Adams. "Warren Buffett and Ernie are actually somewhat similar," Carlisle says. "I have met Warren Buffet. Warren is one of these people who is phenomenally rigorous in his analysis. If there was someone you might associate with Ernie, it is someone who is [also] slightly asocial."

Adams' official title is director of football research, and he does a lot of that, too, trolling the world for things that might offer the slightest advantage. A year or two ago, an Andover teammate ran across an obscure out-of-print book on nonlinear mathematics. He thought Adams might find a use for it, so he mailed it to him. Adams had already read it. Or there's Rutgers statistics professor Harold Sackrowitz, who got a call from Adams a few years back. Adams wanted to talk about some research Sackrowitz had just completed, dealing with how teams try two-point conversions far too often. Adams sent the professor the Patriots' when-to-go-for-two chart, and asked Sackrowitz to tear it apart. Of the 32 NFL teams, the statistician told the New York Times, only the Patriots called.

Here's another example: The academic paper of a Berkeley researcher, referenced in the same Times story, dealt with how teams punt on fourth down far too often. That paper ended up on Belichick's desk. Now, how do you imagine it got there?

While in sixth and seventh grades, Adams read Lombardi's book "Run to Daylight" about 20 times. His obsessive personality drew him further into the web of this game, one with X's and O's he could control, men he could make appear whenever he wanted. It was simple, something missing in the 1960s. The campus and nearby Harvard were exploding in anger over the Vietnam War. Everything was turned upside down. "He was very old-fashioned," Bissinger says. "He was sort of the Lombardi era. Something about him was out of the 1940s. He was just different. He had no knowledge of rock 'n' roll or sex or drugs. The [high] school was rampant with it. Everyone was stoned. Everyone was drinking. And there was Ernie in his high-top cleats talking football with the head coach."

Wow! Great read.. gives you goosebumps reading it cuz the guy is so mysterious, felt like I was reading one of those mystery books lol

He's probably the key reason for spygate and deflategate.

Really good scouting on Hernandez.

Pretty neat.
He sounds like the intelligence officer on Belichick's staff. He's probably the one who oversees their shadowy activities and provides real-time analysis.
I've always been curious if the booth can provide detailed real-time analysis. As I understand it, coaches do review things after series and at halftime. But, it seems like having some uber scouts in the booth might help pick up tell signs in individual matchups, formations, or playcalling patterns. The communication will be very tricky, but I guess Belichick and Adams have the rapport to make it happen.

I also read up a bit on Steven Belichick and found his book (https://www.amazon.com/Football-Scouting-Methods-Steve-Belichick/dp/1891396757).
He appears to have served in the Navy at Normandy and Okinawa. Assuming he was an officer, I'm curious if the military staff and operations structure influenced his philosophy, which rubbed off on Belichick and Adams. Maybe he mixed his experiences with the dynamic nature of football and the rigid structure of large-scale amphibious operations.

Originally posted by zonkers:

Pretty neat.
He sounds like the intelligence officer on Belichick's staff. He's probably the one who oversees their shadowy activities and provides real-time analysis.
I've always been curious if the booth can provide detailed real-time analysis. As I understand it, coaches do review things after series and at halftime. But, it seems like having some uber scouts in the booth might help pick up tell signs in individual matchups, formations, or playcalling patterns. The communication will be very tricky, but I guess Belichick and Adams have the rapport to make it happen.

I also read up a bit on Steven Belichick and found his book (https://www.amazon.com/Football-Scouting-Methods-Steve-Belichick/dp/1891396757).
He appears to have served in the Navy at Normandy and Okinawa. Assuming he was an officer, I'm curious if the military staff and operations structure influenced his philosophy, which rubbed off on Belichick and Adams. Maybe he mixed his experiences with the dynamic nature of football and the rigid structure of large-scale amphibious operations.

That book is still pretty much the Bible for football scouts decades later and has influenced generations of NFL GMs. Its crazy how big of an effect the Belichick family has had on the league.

I want to be as good as this guy.

I want the 49ers to have people like these. Like we once did.

Originally posted by 49er-from-Yavin-IV:
I want the 49ers to have people like these. Like we once did.

49ers haven't won a SB without this guy around. Coincidence? I think not.

San Jose State's large place in Super Bowl history extends beyond serving this week as the host for the NFC champion Carolina Panthers.

The school was the first to have two graduates serve as Super Bowl-winning head coaches when Bill Walsh won three with the 49ers and Dick Vermeil captured one with the St. Louis Rams (SJSU has since been joined by Pacific thanks to the Raiders' Tom Flores and Seattle Seahawks' Pete Carroll).

It turns out, the owner of the most Super Bowl rings ever is also a Spartan. That would be Neal Dahlen, a former executive for the 49ers and Denver Broncos.

Dahlen, also a former SJSU quarterback, started as a part-time employee with the 49ers in 1979 and earned increasing roles throughout his time in San Francisco that coincided with their dominant run of five Super Bowl titles.

Dahlen was hired in 1996 as the Broncos' director of player personnel in time to see Denver win two Super Bowl titles. He took over as general manager after the second title and held that role for three years in which the Broncos went 25-23 in the immediate aftermath of Hall of Fame quarterback John Elway's retirement.

http://www.mercurynews.com/2016/02/05/former-san-jose-state-quarterback-is-lord-of-super-bowl-rings/

It'll be interesting to see what Chip develops on his own, especially since he's got that Belichick relationship.
Azzinaro seems to be his trusty foreman who gets everyone in place. IIRC, Day is his extension for the QBs.
These are smaller beans, so maybe he'll push for more FO departments. They already have contracts mastery, so maybe they can find new ways to utilize video tech and sports science. Or hire a bunch of football geeks like Ernie Adams.