Pat Patriot
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- Mar 19, 2019
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Benjamin Watson signed with the Patriots this offseason, 15 years after they drafted him and 10 years after he left in free agency. On his return, he has renewed respect for coach Bill Belichick.
Watson still remembers some of the lessons he learned from Belichick the first time around, but now that he’s spent a decade elsewhere, he values those lessons even more.
“I definitely have a different appreciation for him than I had 15 years ago,” Watson said on SiriusXM NFL Radio, via ESPN. “There are many ways he hasn’t changed. Sitting in the team meeting room, he says a lot of the same things, because they are still true. Being much older than I was before, I’m able to appreciate that a lot more — a lot of the coaching, and embrace it in a way I wasn’t before. I can also see him separate from the coach, he does enjoy himself, he does smile, he does do all those things as a young player you thought he never did.”
Belichick has always appreciated Watson as well. Belichick once called Watson running down Champ Bailey in the 2005 playoffs the best play he’s ever seen in a game the Patriots lost.