Matt Freed, Post-Gazette
	Bill Belichick

FOXBORO, Mass. -- The Mastermind is wearing shorts on a 20-degree day. More fashionably incorrect, he is wearing a baggy, long-sleeve, Patriots T-shirt that droops untucked down around his thighs, nearly engulfing those shorts. His white socks are askew, the right reaching mid-shin and the left wilting to the top of his white running shoes. His hangdog expression falls almost as far south as his shirt.

Bill Belichick purposefully dresses this way, for his success. He prefers bulky gray sweatshirts and knit caps on an NFL sideline. The Mastermind is unadorned, unfettered and unmoved by it all. And he is adored from Maine to Connecticut as a result, because of his football brilliance, his Patriots' predominance, his Everyman values in his adoptive New England.

A publication called the Improper Bostonian recently selected him as Boston's Best Mastermind, concluding that he "could trade Tom Brady for a tackling dummy, and we'd say, 'We can't wait to see where he's going with this.' " Wintertime converts from the Red Sox Nation call into talk-radio shows to tout his ability to bring home victories with sheer brainpower and will.

Speed signs around leafy Foxboro warn drivers to proceed cautiously through populous areas with an accompanying placard that just as easily speaks for New England the region and Bill Belichick the man: Thickly settled.

"Simple, blue-collar guy," offered Patriots offensive guard Joe Andruzzi, an eight-year veteran who spent four years before that at Southern Connecticut State. "Tries to be the best at what he does."

"And I think the people around here recognize that," added center Dan Koppen from Boston College, "and just want him here."

So his system fits New England, much the way the baggy clothes fit Belichick.

Maybe that explains why it didn't work for him elsewhere, this Maryland guy who failed in Cleveland and summarily resigned in New York hours after being asked to follow his mentor. Yet here he is, back in the New England where he calculatedly chose to attend prep school and college, where he bought a place on Nantucket and nestled into the landscape like Bunker Hill, rock steady and central and stoic.

He is 67-20 as a head coach the past five years, already the most successful in franchise history and nearly twice as successful as that mentor, Bill Parcells, who lost his only Super Bowl trip with the Patriots. Parcells' understudy has won two Super Bowls in the past three years and aims for a third in four, a path presently impeded by an AFC championship game with the Steelers at 6:30 p.m. Sunday in Heinz Field. A victory there and another Feb. 6 in Jacksonville could catapult Belichick into coaching legend, possibly even the Hall of Fame.

"It's a nice compliment," the Mastermind said, with the T-shirt and the shorts and the monotone voice and the unwavering news conference expression of mild pain. "I don't think it really means much this week. Pittsburgh doesn't care.

"What we have to do this week is, we have to get back to work and have a good week of preparation and get as mentally and physically prepared as we possibly can to play the best team in the AFC in their place. If we don't, I'm sure none of those things will be said next week."

He sure isn't the Steelers' Bill Cowher. He doesn't spit, rant, exult, grin. Asked to compare the two, Patriots and former Steelers punter Josh Miller said jokingly, "Coach Cowher's taller."

Belichick tries to motivate with different methods, usually seizing upon slights real or not, such as when Cowher, before the 2001 AFC championship game, gave his players a few hours to hash out ticket requests in case his team would make Super Bowl XXXVI. Belichick translated it this way: Look at them, planning their Super Bowl trip without even playing us first. He supposedly did much of the same last week for Indianapolis, whom the Patriots tripped in a divisional playoff, 20-3.

"It's definitely different," 13-year veteran Keith Traylor said of the coach's style. "I don't know what it is exactly. But he gets his point across, and he gets it across well."

"He sees a vision, he knows what he has to put into it to make it happen," Miller added.

More so than Tom Brady's arm or the heart of the Patriots' linebackers, Belichick's brain has become the most dread arrow in the New England quiver.

He devised two-man fronts and defensive looks that stymied the Steelers in 2001 at Heinz Field. Despite his protests about this game requiring little strategy, the opponent awaits the newest wrinkle. As Steelers receiver Hines Ward offered this week: "We know coach Belichick. He's going to have something up for us that we are going to have to adjust to on the run."

This is a man, surprisingly, who is tight with rocker Jon Bon Jovi, a man whom the affable NBA commentator Charles Barkley telephones when he needs a laugh, a man who submerses himself into football so much that it hides his sense of humor and his love of rock 'n' roll from the Beatles to U2 to Bruce Springsteen to Bon Jovi (a Giants fan who not long ago dedicated an album cut to him). Aliquippa's Ty Law once opined of his coach: "I can't say everyone here loves Bill. Some really don't know him that well. But he has the respect and the ear of every player."

Because of the Mastermind.

It's too simple to ascribe Belichick's mental capacity to being a coach's son. Yet Steve Belichick was more than a coach at Navy for 33 years; he was a scouting and game-film aficionado. He wrote the book on dissecting film. At his side was his young son. "He was 12 years old, breaking down film," marveled practice-squad linebacker Justin Kurpeikis, another former Steeler.

When it came time to choose a prep school, Belichick went to Phillips Academy in Andover, Mass., where Presidents Bush I and II matriculated. He stuck around and attended Wesleyan College in Middletown, Conn. He graduated with a degree in economics, which he promptly put to use in ... coaching.

He earned $25 a day, and room and board in 1975 as a gofer with his hometown Baltimore Colts. He spent hours a day driving around coaches who talked football, football, football. An awesome job, he called it.

He joined the Detroit Lions the next season as an assistant to the special teams coach, and the journey began. In 1978, Denver. In '79, the New York Giants, where he arose under Ray Perkins and then Bill Parcells, becoming defensive coordinator in '85 in time to gather up Lawrence Taylor, Carl Banks, Pepper Johnson and two Super Bowl rings, in '86 and '90.

Then came Cleveland. Oops.

He was 38 and an outsider. He cast off the most popular Browns player of the past quarter-century, an aging Bernie Kosar. He angered media and fans with the monotone and scowl that suggested a holier-, if not smarter-, than-thou character. He assembled an able cast of assistants -- current Patriots vice president Scott Pioli, Nick Saban of the Miami Dolphins, Upper St. Clair's Kirk Ferentz of Iowa, Pat Hill of Fresno State, plus Ozzie Newsome and Phil Savage of the Baltimore and Cleveland front offices. And he righted the club to 11-5 and a playoff victory against Parcells and the Patriots in 1994, whereupon his Browns lost, 29-9, to Cowher's Steelers. By the next season, Art Modell was moving the Browns to Baltimore, and Belichick and his 36-44 record weren't invited.

Belichick followed Parcells to the Patriots and Jets where, after three seasons, Parcells retired so his friend could assume control -- but Belichick preferred the autonomy and the new stadium with New England. He handed in the infamous exit note about resigning as "HC of the NYJ" and held a news conference that Jets president Steve Guttman called the ramblings of "someone in turmoil."

Instead, not far from Walden's Pond, he found tranquility. He found his Mastermind self.

In New England, he hired Pioli, and they set about rearranging a bloated salary cap so strenuously that the roster was below the mandated 53 on opening day 2000. They brought in players who fit their scouting description: Football is important to him. They sold a program of teamwork and hard work and plugging holes, as the case with former starting receiver Troy Brown learning cornerback to the point he plays nickel back in a battered secondary. They install game plans so precise, like the 2-4-5 alignment Sunday against the Colts that linebacker Ted Johnson admitted, "I was confused on that, too." Linebacker Mike Vrabel's film-study ability is so legendary here, "he's like another coach," Kurpeikis said, but Vrabel contends that he cannot glean anywhere as much as Belichick from watching the same hour of tape.

"He'll relive a play that happened in the third quarter in 1974, and know all the guys who played for his team and the other team, and who [officiated] the game," Miller said. "Like I said, student of the game. I shouldn't even say student; he's the professor."

After making such tough cuts as Drew Bledsoe and salary-balking Lawyer Milloy, the Patriots were able to lure more free-agent help, such as Rodney Harrison -- whom Belichick recruited over dinner not at a clam-chowder house but a Ground Round. Harrison told The Boston Globe: "There was no b.s. about it."

Same with Belichick, or so it seems. He had made up with Kosar and the Cleveland media, even exchanging remorseful e-mails with an Akron columnist. He asked for public-relations assistance. He learned from past mistakes. Most of all, he won -- 30 of his past 32 games and 50 of 61.

Ever the analyst, Belichick cuts to the economics of any matter: Decipher the best option for your team. Not what it would take some team to beat, say, the grind-it-out Steelers. But a plan that fits simply, that suits without much alteration.

Like a baggy shirt.

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