Bill Belichick gets nervous just like you do before Patriots games

Bill Belichick, arguably the greatest coach of all time, admitted Friday to reporters that he still gets nervous before all Patriots games.

You’re not alone, Patriots fans.

That nervous, jittery feeling you get before kickoff of every Pats game? The G.O.A.T. himself gets that very same feeling. Even after all the years of experience, wins, and Super Bowl championships, New England head coach Bill Belichick still gets butterflies in his stomach on the football field.

“Nervous? Sure. You want to go out there and do well. There’s an anxiety,” Belichick told reporters during his press conference on Friday. “We all have things in the game that we have to do. You want to perform them well, not let your team down, because everyone is counting on you to do your job, and you’re counting on everybody else to do theirs.”

“Do Your Job” has become a slogan synonymous with the Patriot Way over the years – so much so, that it was actually embroidered onto the ball caps given to all New England picks at the NFL draft last spring. It’s a simple-enough concept: if every player, coach, assistant, and staffer on the team does their one job, then the team as a whole should be unbeatable.

Of course, actually executing it flawlessly on the field for 60 minutes is the real challenge.

Never one to shy away from an opportunity for sarcasm, Belichick couldn’t restrain himself from dishing a bit out on Friday, just two days away from the team’s eighth consecutive AFC Championship Game appearance in Kansas City.

“They all count in this league,” Belichick declared, responding to a question about whether he gets more nervous for playoff games than regular or preseason games. “Just let me know the next game that doesn’t matter, so I can take that into account. Just let me know the ones that don’t matter, I’ll make sure I don’t get excited for those.”

If it wasn’t painfully obvious already, Coach Belichick treats all games with equal weight and importance… so it’s no surprise that he gets pregame anxiety before each and every one of them.

So next time you think your heart’s about to explode as you pace around your living room in front of the television set, frantically biting your nails and clutching your lucky Patriots souvenir to your chest superstitiously, just remember that you don’t have it half as bad as Bill Belichick. He’s experiencing the exact same thing, just magnified times a thousand.