What's up, everybody?

Welcome into Tom Carnes Patriots talk podcast.

Phil Perry will be along in just a second.

Today was the last day that I will watch Bill Belichick walk into a Patriots press conference.

And I've been doing that since January of 2000.

So it's surreal to realize that after literally thousands of occasions in which I watched

the greatest coach in football history wander into that room.

This was the last time, at least as Patriots head coach.

And you could always tell when Bill came in, kind of how the next 15 minutes were going to go.

He'd said you'd indicate a right out of the chutes with his facial expression,

with the first things that he said, sometimes even with how his hair

was combed. Messy? He wasn't in a good spot. Clean? Ready to go? Talked away? If he stood up there with a

what do we got today? Or nice weather out there? Something jovial or even at least somewhat friendly, you know

it was going to be all right. And we had a lot of friendly times in press conferences over the

years, Bill and I, Bill and many of the media. In the end, as Bill is done here in New England,

you look back at all that he did and all that we learned about the NFL,

certainly the media, people like me who sat there like, you know, at the knee of Aristotle,

excuse me, learning from this guy so many different things that I will be able to recount over and over again

in so many different situations, whether it be when to start your kids in football,

why a left-footed punter is difficult to deal with, why you take receivers in the second

round and defensive tackles up high. I learned all those things and way more. But the Patriots

made a business decision, as Robert Kraft said,

...