When it came time for him to reach for the red marker and correct the work of his young offensive assistant, then New England Patriots quarterbacks coach Bill O’Brien opted for a joke. Despite his nickname—Teapot—O’Brien insists his default love language is a kind of ribbing humor, which prompted him to hand Brian Flores’s first few projects in New England’s QB room back with the quip: “Come on, man, I thought you graduated from Boston College?”
“We spent a lot of time together that year,” O’Brien, now, ironically, the head coach of Boston College, says about a seldom discussed but vitally important 2010 season in which Flores, now the Minnesota Vikings’ defensive coordinator, was subject to New England’s Karate Kid–style coach cross-training process in an offensive room for a team that won 14 games and finished first in total points. “Go break down these 100 games, all these opponents we’re going to play the following year. He had to break everything down, down to the blocking scheme. So after you do that for a long time, you really understand a lot about football.”
