There’s a lesson, we suppose, to be gleaned from Bill Belichick’s freshly published book, “The Art of Winning: Lessons from My Life in Football,” in a chapter that discusses his final victory over the Dolphins in Miami in 2019.
It’s about a gift Antonio Brown had in mind for Tom Brady.
It’s about spilled milk.
And it’s about possibly the strangest phone call Bill Belichick ever had to make, trying to dip into the coffers of the New England Patriots to pay for that spilled milk.
Here’s Belichick’s account on how it unfolded:
As the 2019 preseason wound down, the Patriots signed Brown, the enigmatic receiver, who quickly earned Brady’s respect with a deep dive into the offensive playbook. In turn, Brown decided to give Brady a present: some bison and milk.
Milk? Both men have unusual diets, but milk?
“Not from a grocery store,” Belichick wrote. “No, this was special milk. Very special. Flown in from the Midwest. It had nutritional superpowers, and it certainly should have because it apparently cost over $500 a bottle.”
You’d think at that price, it would come with a warning labeled “perishable.”
You’d be wrong.
It arrived on Friday afternoon, two days before New England’s road-opener in Miami on Sept. 15, but too late for Brown to present it to Brady after practice.
“Even Antonio’s magic milk couldn’t survive spending a night next to Tom’s locker at room temperature,” Belichick wrote.
Brown felt bad because his special gift was ruined.
Brady felt bad because Brown felt bad.
What’s a coach to do?
“We were all crying over spoiled milk,” Belichick wrote.
“Unfortunately, it fell to me to arrange with an understandably skeptical business office at the Patriots the need for reimbursement, and quickly. (Imagine having to be the person saying this on a professional phone call: ‘So, look, I’ll preface this with… yes, I know this is hard to believe, but it’s Tom, it’s AB, they’ve got a kind of football bromance thing going on right now.… If it were anyone else, I’d for sure tell them to get lost, but we should do this. Yes, I know it’s thirty-five hundred dollars for groceries.’ ”)
Tom Brady, Antonio Brown connect on 20-yard TD pass in Patriots’ win
Was the money well spent? You decide: Just before halftime, the Patriots broke open the game when Brady hit Brown with a 20-yard touchdown pass. Brady threw for 264 yards and two touchdowns and Brown caught four passes for 56 yards to cruise to a 43-0 victory, which represents New England’s most recent victory at Hard Rock Stadium.
“Would you spend $3,500 to ensure the best person on your team gave their best performance when it mattered most?” Belichick wrote. Would you pay twice that to immediately relieve your star employee of a depressive episode, no matter how head-shaking? Absolutely, and you know it.”
A tale as odd as this wouldn’t be complete without a fittingly strange postscript.
Brown was released by Belichick a few days later.
“Signing him definitely was not worth the millions we owed him in signing bonus payments,” Belichick wrote. “But I don’t regret buying that milk.”
This article originally appeared on Palm Beach Post: Bill Belichick book excerpt: Spoiled milk, Tom Brady-Antonio Brown bromance