“He did a great job for me and I learned an awful lot from him, again because of his experience as a player and how his playing career — he was a wide receiver in college and then he became a tight end so there was a lot of development and progression of his career,” Belichick said. “Like every player, had a great career, peaked and at the end was at a different point in his career and how that whole transition worked for him. He taught me an awful lot about that and just the whole passing game, receiving, being a receiver, playing for different quarterbacks, playing in different offensive systems as he did and so forth. He was a great resource for me. ”

Newsome went straight from playing into the front office. Belichick never got to coach the Hall of Fame tight end, but he helped Newsome decide what he wanted to do after his playing career was over.

“He had retired after the ’90 season and we sat down, it’s one the first things I did when I took the job,” Belichick said. “We sat down, talked to Ozzie about his future. He wanted to have a future in the organization, he wasn’t sure if it was in coaching or scouting or some other aspect of public relations or player development or whatever it was. He did a number of different things for me there. He coached, he was in the scouting department — similar kind of maybe to what Nick [Caserio] has done here, kind of going a little bit back and forth. I think in the end probably all those experiences benefitted him because he got an appreciation of the scouting end, the player end of it — of course he had been a player so he had great familiarity of what it was like to be a player in the NFL — but scouting players, developing players, being a coach, creating game plans, making personnel decisions from a coach, as opposed to as a scout, and all those things.”

Belichick was asked how he deals with players, like running back Stevan Ridley, who have to overcome mental errors. Belichick used Newsome as an example when he was talking about players who had overcome mental mistakes.

“Take Ozzie Newsome. There’s a good example right there,” Belichick said. “When Ozzie was a rookie, he played 13 years, when he was rookie, he fumbled, lost the ball, team lost the game. Never fumbled again the rest of his career. Never fumbled again the rest of his career — 600 and 700 [662 receptions] passes, however many passes it was, however many times he touched the ball the rest of his career, never fumbled again. Why is Ozzie Newsome in the Hall of Fame? That’s why. That kind of commitment, that kind of performance. It was important enough to him. Fumbled once, didn’t fumble again the rest of his entire career. Now think about that. Want to know how a guy gets in the Hall of Fame? That’s one reason.”

Belichick spoke passionately about Newsome, which puts the Patriots’ rivalry with the Ravens in perspective. There is just as much animosity between the teams as there is respect.

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