The Patriots’ head coach went into great detail about his time in Denver during his Friday press conference.

To a degree, Bill Belichick being portrayed as a stoic, no-nonsense coach whose manufacturer setting is “slightly annoyed at all times” and who offers little insight when talking to the media, is justified. However, the New England Patriots’ head coach has shown time and again that he can go into great detail when speaking about topics he is passionate about.

His appearance on ESPN’s College GameDay ahead of this year’s Army-Navy Game is a perfect example of that. Another came during a press conference on Friday.

Talking about a wide variety of topics, Belichick offered great insight into a lot of them — from his thoughts on the ball inflation saga during Sunday’s game against the Kansas City Chiefs, to the performance of starting center David Andrews, to his one season as a staff member of this week’s opponent, the Denver Broncos.

After starting his coaching career in Baltimore in 1975 and two years spent in Detroit, Belichick joined the Broncos as a defensive and special teams assistant. He only spent one season at the job before moving on to the New York Giants, but it still had an impact on his career.

“It was a great year for me. It was a great experience,” Belichick said on Friday.

He went on to talk about the coaches who he worked with in Denver and how they impacted him — including former Patriots quarterback Babe Parilli — before taking a detour to speak about the history of the 3-4 defense through the 1970s and 1980s. And while Belichick’s team rarely uses a classic 3-4 these days, his breakdown of how the scheme evolved through the years was fascinating.

Usually, for readability and formatting reasons we would split the quotes up and contextualize as we go along. Given the depth of Belichick’s remarks on the 1978 Broncos and its defensive scheme, however, we decided to go a different way and post the full transcript.

Enjoy.

Q: Coach, not a lot of people were aware that you actually used to coach for Denver back in 1978. Just wondering if anything stands out to you from that season or just kind of the organization in general still that pertains to this day?

BB: Yeah, it was a great year for me. It was a great experience. The two years before that, I was in Detroit; coached the tight ends and receivers in Detroit. And then, in Denver, I went back to working on the special teams — worked on special teams in Detroit, too — but worked more on special teams and the defensive side of the ball in Denver. And, that was with Joe Collier and Richie McCabe, so it was Stan Jones, Bob Zeman, Richie McCabe and Joe Collier. And then, I did the breakdowns and stuff like that. So, I learned a ton out there. It was a graduate course from Joe, from Richie about the secondary play, and just in general the 3-4 defense. And then, we played a over defense. It was like a version of a 3-4 Detroit, but it was a little bit different. Joe played the 3-4 defense that he played in Denver, which was — the spacing was the same, but it was configured a lot differently than what we eventually ran in the Giants when Coach [Bill] Parcells came. So, Baltimore was all 4-3. Detroit was a different version of odd spacing, 3-4 defense in Denver. Then, we played 4-3 for a couple years with Ralph Hawkins in New York. And then when Coach Parcells came, it was all 3-4, but it was a different type of 3-4 defense than what Joe ran in Denver, even though the spacing was the same. And that was — looking back on it — a great learning experience, because I saw kind of the same thing, but they were actually very different in the way they were coached and the way they were — the schematics of it. And, of course, that changed some of the fundamentals too. The red area coverages that Joe ran out there, I’d say at that time, he was pretty far ahead of his time. They’re pretty common now, but at that time they were pretty unique for the most part. So, that was a great experience. I really didn’t have too much interaction on the offensive side of the ball, other than — I was there, but I wasn’t in those meetings, and that type of thing. We lost in the playoffs there, but had a good team the year before — they had gone to the Super Bowl, beat Oakland three times. So, coming off of that year, coming off the ‘77 season, they lost to Dallas in the Super Bowl. So, a lot of good players, a lot of really good players out there, and a lot of good coaches, a lot of good experience that I gained. Babe Parilli, who was quarterback coach — they had [Craig] Morton — I learned a lot from Babe, too, because I spent a lot of time with Babe. He kind of mentored me from the opposite side of the ball. I mean, I asked him a lot of questions and bothered him a lot, but he couldn’t have been more accommodating, from just the quarterback coaching perspective, because that’s something I hadn’t done. So, I learned a lot out there that year.

Q: Coach, you mentioned the 3-4 and odd spacing. I was wondering how do you differentiate those and how have you seen them change from your days with Denver to the modern day — the structures evolve and how teams kind of use them? You mentioned there were different variations in spacing and things like that.

BB: Are you talking about the 3-4 defense? Right, well, Pittsburgh has their 3-4 defense. I would say that’s a lot different than — way, way different than what Joe’s defense was in Denver. The spacing is the same, but the coverages and the way the defense is structured is just a lot different. In Denver, we played the ends in five techniques. Pittsburgh plays them inside the tackles. We call it 4i. They over/over-shifted and some unders. Joe, at Denver, we’d go into a game with 50 different fronts. So, the 3-4 became a 4-3. It became an over, it became an under, it became an even, it became a multitude of fronts and stunts that went with those fronts. But, we really only ran, call it two coverages, three coverages. But, the variety of the fronts were – it was hard to block those fronts because there were so many different looks, so many different combinations. And, we had good players. We had Rubin Carter on those who was really good. [Lyle] Alzado, who was good, [Barney] Chavous, who was good. Then [Randy] Gradishar — [Tom] Jackson and [Bob] Swenson were the two outside linebackers, so they were both really good. They could rush. They could set the edge. Jackson was fast. So, those guys on the front were a real problem. If they just sat there and never moved, they would have been a problem, then, when you put all the different combinations together. And, Billy Thompson is the safety who was really one of the best. I mean, I’ve coached a lot of good safeties, but he’s right up there. He’s one of the best ones I’ve coached, that I was with. So, it’s just a different system, that’s all. Again, it was a good learning experience. When came to the Giants from New England and brought the 3-4, his version of the 3-4, which was from Fritz Shurmur. Fritz was in Detroit when I was there. When we played that over 5-2 at Detroit, Bill’s 3-4 was a lot different than Joe Collier’s. As a coach, I kind of sat back and saw some ways to maybe merge some of those things together, which as I’ve gone on in my career, I’ve taken some things that Joe did, some things that Bill did, merged them together along some other stuff, too.