New England Patriots' new safeties coach has familiar name

The New England Patriots made all of their assistant coaches available to local media on Monday, and that meant the in-front-of-cameras debut of the team's new safeties coach: Steve Belichick.

The middle of head coach Bill Belichick's three children and the older of his two sons, Steve, 29, served as a defensive coaching assistant for four years before getting his first chance to run a position when there was a shakeup in the team's coaching staff.

A defensive assistant is pretty much a gopher for all of the other coaches on that side of the ball, and it's likely Steve Belichick also spent a lot of time breaking down film. He also listened.

“Just kept my mouth shut and learned,” he said when asked what he'd done to prepare himself for his new position. “Everybody in this building is smarter than I am. I’ve got a lot to learn from everybody. These guys have been through it, and I haven’t.”

Bill Belichick grew up working with his late father, a Navy football assistant also named Steve, whenever he could, watching film and going on scouting trips. Bill wanted to be just like his father, and Steve grew up wanting to be just like his father.

“I’ve followed every single thing that he’s done,” the younger Belichick said. “Obviously, I love my dad. He’s my role model, he’s my idol. I’ve wanted to be just like him since I knew what an idol was.”

Coaching is the family business now; the oldest Belichick child, Amanda, is the head women's lacrosse coach at the College of the Holy Cross in Massachusetts.

While Steve Belichick certainly favors his father, he has long, dark blond hair and a full beard, the opposite of Bill's dark hair, which he wears in a short cut. Bill is always clean-shaven.

Steve played football and lacrosse in high school and prep school, and then spent five years at Rutgers, the first four as a member of the Scarlet Knights' lacrosse team and the fifth as a long-snapper on the football team (it was his grandfather that taught him how to snap). Every summer, though, he was at Patriots' training camp, working as a ball boy and building his knowledge as he watched his father, New England's assistants, and the players.

In a profile of Steve by the Providence Journal last year, former Rutgers football players and current Patriots defensive backs Duron Harmon and Logan Ryan said though Steve was a teammate, he was also a pseudo-assistant, studying opponents and helping players get ready for their upcoming game.

Steve Belichick will now be coaching players he went to school with, Harmon and Devin McCourty, and said on Monday that there is joking back and forth between himself and the players.

He obviously didn't exactly have to apply for a job on the staff or connect to Bill Belichick through a friend of a friend, but Steve Belichick doesn't sound like someone happy to rest on his last name.

“Hopefully, I’m just like him. That’s what I try to be like,” Steve said of his father. “Been around football my whole life, so just to have the support of the rest of the coaches and everybody else behind me to step up to a bigger role in this organization, I’m excited about.”