(No, not the Governor of NH)

I thought we’d pass along this first hand account from a BSMW message board member who recently had the pleasure of speaking with former NFL safety John Lynch, who had a long distinguished career with the Buccaneers and Broncos, and who had a cup of coffee last preseason with the Patriots.

The other day I was going to a dreaded corporate offsite where one of the guest speakers was going to be John Lynch. Prior to him speaking I had gotten up to stretch/walk around a bit and as I was walking around I floated to the back as Lynch was showing up, and I ended up standing back there with him for about 5 minutes or so. He actually spoke to me first, wanted to know how many speakers we had prior to him, if the crowd was getting tired etc. I told him he’d likely be a breath of fresh air if he spoke about football.

For some reason it occurred to me right then that this guy had played for 3 SB winning coaches (Dungy, Gruden, Shanahan) and a few weeks of preseason for a 4th (Belichick). I mentioned it to him and he replied “well, 5 actually if you count my last year at Stanford with Bill Walsh. A coach who went to a SB drafted me (Wyche) and my coach prior to Walsh at Stanford went on to coach in 2 NFCCGs (Denny Green). I then asked him a question that at first I immediately regretted as it sounded stupid on the surface, as he obviously played for an amazing group of coaches: “who was the best coach you played for?”

I admit his answer stunned me. Without skipping a beat, he said, “Coach Belichick.”

He went on to say he learned more about football and a winning organization in the 3 weeks or so that he was with the Patriots than anywhere else. He added that the last exhibition game, he and BB spoke prior to the game and both agreed that it wasn’t going to work and Lynch informed BB that he would retire. BB offered to allow him to play with the starters, one or two series and then done, but Lynch asked to play the whole game, realizing this might cost BB the chance to look at some guys that might stick, but BB played him. Lynch said he had a blast playing with a bunch of young guys he barely knew.

Pretty cool stuff. The board member also added that in his speech to the group, Lynch spent as much time talking about his time with the Patriots as he did about his time either in Tampa or Denver, which is pretty remarkable, considering he won a Super Bowl in Tampa.

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