Paul Daugherty

pdaugherty@enquirer.com

By now, Bill Belichick has beaten the Bengals in his mind for at least three days. He arrived at his Gillette Stadium office well before dawn last Monday and started to stare at video, oblivious to everything but winning the next game and the preparation it takes.

The Bengals have prepared, too, equally diligently, with similar obsession. The difference is, the Bengals prep – anybody’s prep – isn’t Belichick’s prep. Just because you work all week on things you think you’ll see Sunday doesn’t mean you’ll see them on Sunday.

Belichick will know more than you do. About his team. And possibly, about yours.

“You always have the feeling they have the right answer,’’ says Bengals owner Mike Brown. The Browns and the Belichicks have a friendship that extends half a century, to Bill Belichick’s father Steve. “Bill has such a wide repertoire and he can install things immediately. They just respond quickly. They’re always a little different, always moving. It’s like a kaleidoscope.’’

Andrew Whitworth chuckled while recalling Game 4 in 2007, in which the Pats beat the Bengals, 34-13:

“We prepared for them to be one thing the entire week, and the first snap they were, the next 68 snaps they weren’t.”

It’d be accurate to say Bill Belichick is the caricature of an obsessed football coach but, given his accomplishments, not quite fair. The one year Sam Wyche coached the Indiana Hoosiers, he’d dispatch a graduate assistant or someone equally low on the totem pole, telling the poor kid to stand outside the coaches offices of the team IU was playing that Saturday.

The kid’s job was to let Wyche know the minute the opponent’s coaches turned their lights out for the night. That’s when Wyche would let his coaches go home.

That’s a caricature.

If you want to know who Bill Belichick is, good luck. If you want to know who he is as a football coach, rewind to Wednesday, Oct. 1, 2014, 36 hours after the Kansas City Chiefs handed New England its aspirations in prime time, 41-14. The wolves were at Belichick’s door. The heathen media wanted to know if the Patriots and Tom Brady were about to become has-beens. “Do you think you’ve got enough now with Brady?’’ an intrepid hack asked.

“We’re on to Cincinnati,’’ Belichick said.

“How do you react to the adversity of Monday night?’’

“We’re on to Cincinnati.’’

“You think having a 37-year-old quarterback. . .’’

“We’re on to Cincinnati. It’s nothing about the past, nothing about the future.’’

It went on this way a few minutes, Belichick telling the media who New England’s next opponent was, and assuring them his team would show up. What seemed a severe case of smarrogance – smug arrogance – was, in retrospect, just Belichick being honest.

He was on to Cincinnati. Later that year, in an extraordinary interview on NFL Network, Belichick explained, “It’s 24 hours after the game. You gotta move on.

“I could have (said) it three times, I could have (said) it 53 times, I could have done it 103 times if that’s what they wanna keep asking. Because we had to turn the page, and we have.’’ For the record, the pride-stung Patriots and the motivated Brady beat the Bengals 43-17 on the way to winning their fourth Super Bowl.

Current Bengals wideout Brandon LaFell was on that Pats team. He reflected on that news conference that was so essential to who Belichick is as a coach.

“That was typical Bill,’’ LaFell said this week. “Something bad happens, we don’t dwell on it, we’re not go feel sorry for ourselves, we’re not going to listen to media. We left all the mistakes in KC. We got on that plane, it was a clean slate.’’

Put another way, Marvin Lewis admires Belichick’s “ability to adjust and adapt to understand what’s important at the moment, not last week, not next week.’’

Mike Brown says Belichick’s dad would take young Bill to Browns training camp at Hiram College, lorded over by Paul Brown, aka The Great Man. Steve Belichick was a legendary scout and assistant at Navy. The apple fell on top of the tree.

“Bill sponged it up,’’ says Mike Brown. “(The Browns) were cutting edge. It influenced him. He always credited my father for showing the way.’’

That way includes exhaustive preparation. In a recent story in ESPN the Magazine, former Patriots running back Kevin Faulk explains, “We prepared for everything. There’s no second-guessing when you play for Bill. When you know exactly what you’re doing, your talent flows freely.’’

No coach has ever had a quarterback more aligned with his personality and philosophy than Belichick has with Brady. You could say Brady made Belichick. That would overlook 2008, when the Pats went 11-5 with Matt Cassel. It can be a race during the week at Gillette Stadium, to see who gets their first, Belichick or his QB. Any time after 6 a.m., you lose.

“There is a similarity of intensity and focus, of doing everything necessary to be ready,’’ Mike Brown says. “(Brady) doesn’t stint on his effort off the field. I think a lot of that comes from Belichick.’’

He’s on to Cincinnati, dwelling in that rare space reserved for geniuses, where obsession isn’t an oddity, it’s a requirement. Belichick knows what he knows. And most likely, what you know, too.