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‘The single most important year in my development’: Bill Belichick, Ernie Adams and the 1970 Andover football team

In the late summer of 1970, the Phillips Academy football players came back to school two weeks early to prepare for the season.

Some were new to the handsome prep school campus in Andover, others had known it for years.

Among them were Bill Belichick and Ernie Adams, now head coach and director of football research for the Patriots, then center and right guard for a team that would go undefeated. They weren’t the stars of the team, but they had their first taste of mutual success in football that season, and there already were signs that the game was a calling for both of them.