Zolak & Bertrand: Bill Belichick will be great on TV
Zolak and Bertrand discuss how Bill Belichick will be as an analyst this season on TV with Patriots.com editor Paul Perillo, who is filling in for Zo.
Bertrand: How do you think Bill will be on TV? Think he’s going to be good? I think he’s going to be great, Paul.
Perillo: I think he should be Yeah. I mean, I think that obviously he has an ability to do that better than anybody else. I mean, breaking down even the little snippets that you saw of the draft, he has an ability to watch film and come away with takeaways that most people are not going to get. So I think his ability to sort of present that will be the key. Can he do it in a way that it’s going to be entertaining and interesting to the layman, people like me who aren’t necessarily film junkies? So obviously his knowledge is going to be in a class by itself. I think he can be very good. I think that inevitably we will overrate how good he is at it because every time the guy talks and expresses even a modicum of personality, everyone’s like, ‘Oh, that’s the real Bill. He doesn’t let you see that side of him very often.’ OK, well, he said that Drake Maye needs work. He didn’t break the internet when he was breaking Drake Maye’s college tape. I think he’ll be very good at it if he wants to be and the second part of that is — something that Felger always talks about, and this is the big key — will he be willing to really offer analysis, not just praise but true analysis when things are breaking down telling you why, and telling you individually that this guy’s not good enough, or that guy’s not good enough for that coach didn’t have a great game.
Bertrand: No, you’re not going to get that from him.
Perillo: Well, he’ll only be so good then.
Bertrand: Well, I sort of want to push back on that because my favorite type of analyst is the guy who’s got the experience and the resume and then rips people because that’s what’s most interesting. When things go wrong, tell me why it went wrong. Who effed up? But I don’t think every single person has to be that guy.
Perillo: No, he doesn’t have to rip everybody, but when things go wrong, I don’t want it to be ignored.
Bertrand: I don’t think he’s going to do a lot of it. I think he’s going to do his best to be nice to everybody because he wants back in. So I just think there are different types of people who can exist in the landscape of people who are analyzing and talking about football, and he’s not going to be that guy. He’s not going to be the guy who tells you everything that went wrong, but he will tell you things that maybe you didn’t know or didn’t understand and that’s where he’s going to be valuable. But I think when I say he’s going to do great, he’s going to show off a ton of personality because he needs to. He’s motivated to. So I think, generally speaking, when I say he’ll be great. I think his employers are going to be happy because he’s going to be well received by a ton of viewers. Is it my personal favorite kind of analyst? No, but I think he’ll do great and make his employers happy and make the viewers happy.
LISTEN: Will Bill Belichick be good on television?