Bill O'Brien hops right on the call from practice he doesn't need any introduction Bill O'Brien he's been all around the world I love the whistle coach you got the whistle you got the whistle around the neck like you're kind of a big deal you coming in from you coming straight in from practice Yeah we we practice in the morning so we actually didn't get back from Florida State till yesterday so we had like a kind of a jog through type practice today and just got back in from it that that's a real Coach by the way a jog through we don't do the walkth through it's a jog through never not full never not full speed all right O'Brien on recruiting David Pollack out of High School coach everybody saw the big win um but but I want to take you back many moons ago to I think I read a quote somewhere that you said the greatest recruit you've ever recruited in your life um at a shallow High School oh shallow I think I think it was I think it was you said it was this David Pollock guy that that you were going to find a way to just work in your offense I mean like that's how far we go back everybody just coach coach recruited me to Georgia Tech so you got any funny stories or anything good about that I don't want to I don't want to take the whole podcast but I but I know that I remember the first time I went to Shiloh you guys were in Spring practice I think you were a junior but you were playing you know obviously both sides of the ball and I I thought that you would be a great like uh HB type tight end you know fullback tight end could catch the ball could do some blocking very tough and then um you know you came down to a game I think one time we played Clemson maybe you came to a game Georgia Tech Clemson game at Georgia Tech brought you into the office met with Coach oi I was nervous because you you were you know what made you a great player was like you had a lot of confidence you you were a very confident recruit even when you were 17 years old and so I was like oh please don't don't make this uncomfortable with Coach O and you did you did a great job I think your mom I don't know if your I think it was mom was with you mom was always with me yeah Mom was awesome mom was awesome and so um and then you know obviously you went to Georgia which was heartbreak to us at Georgia Tech but then we when we played you at Georgia it was a Georgia it was at Georgia Tech it was a night game you guys beat us and uh you you had a dominating game at on the defensive line and I was always thinking to myself I I saw this guy as a fullback like now this guy is killing us on the dline but yeah no it was all I totally I have great memories of recruiting you coach don't don't you worry I I I caught a UCF game years ago and Coach O and he looks at me dead pan and he was like you know you you'd still be playing if you were an h-back po you should have come to Tech and you should have been an HB I'm like coach I think it worked out all right like I think it worked out pretty good and and you guys did great but no you had a heck of a staff dude people forget Ralph frian you uh George o ly I mean my goodness y'all had a squad yeah we had a lot of good guys Randy edel Doug Marrone was on the staff for a while over the over time coach oir had some really good coaches on his staffs yeah no doubt about it all right coach Bill O'Brien's Boston College Debut vs. Florida State everybody got excited um this past this past Sunday night uh Monday night watching you guys you guys uh start you started your Boston College tenure in great fashion a lot of excitement it was really cool to see you know Jeff Halley left this team you know to go coach the Green Bay Packers and and your story which is cool you know you took the Ohio state job as an offensive coordinator but but I think what people don't realize is you have a son jack and he spent a a ton of time in hospitals in the Boston area and was I think your family was going to live in Boston regardless of if you were in Columbus or not correct that's right that's right so so when Boston how does the Boston College job come about and and having taken that job at Ohio State and and the family how did all that work together for you to land the Boston College job yeah no I appreciate you asking you know look I I think that this is a throughout my career I've had a lot of you know great jobs you know I've worked for great people I've worked with people that are awesome and and uh some of those jobs have been very comfortable for me other jobs haven't been as comfortable this is a very comfortable job like I I I feel very good about this place I'm from here I grew up a half an hour from here my wife Colleen went to school here she graduated 92 and then like you said in in uh 2002 our son jack was born he just he just turned 22 uh last month in August and and you know he was born kind of dealt a bad hand in life David you know he was born with a brain malformation and you know he requires 247 care he's an awesome kid he's got an unbelievable mom and he's had some great you know nurses and doctors over the years and and one of the things it's hard it's hard to move right it's hard to move and so they didn't when when they stayed in Houston when I went to Alabama they were gonna stay here when I went to Ohio State and so when this job came open the combination of me being from here this being a very good fit for me but most importantly for for Jack and my youngest son Michael goes to toughs he's on the baseball team right across the city here so it was a great uh opportunity for our family no doubt about it yeah and you showed everybody too that you can win win big out the gates um playing against Florida State like I think it was cool to watch you give Jeff Halley a lot of credit you're Building Boston College's roster like I remember hearing you talk for ACC media days and and all the leading up to all the coverage you're like dude this is a good football team he left me a lot of good character kids come into the Florida State game how much belief did you have how did you build that belief how did you get them rolling for that football game yeah I I I do I believe that you know I talked to Jeff uh before I took the job he was great in in describing the job to me and then the kids on the team and uh I I felt good about these guys you know David like you know like football obviously you have to have talent right you you're not going to go far without talent but if you don't have chemistry and you don't have the right type of guys character-wise um up and down the Rost I'm not saying you have to have 100 Angels but you know you have to have guys that have grit determination and you know some form of mental toughness and then you know we built up some physical toughness in in Spring practice and in training camp and I just felt good I I I do think we have to stay healthy I think that's a big key for us but you know I felt like that quarterback and you know some of our positions on the offensive line the the the the uh the defensive line I felt like we we had some guys that could really play and so you you know I I had a good feeling about the team now the trick is can we keep it going you know we've got to try to you know build on it because you know it's only one game it's the first game and you know we got to try to keep it going no it was a great start and I loved your play calling O'Brien talks play calling first of all you've coached a good Tommy before Tommy Brady he was he was pretty solid but Tommy comes out the gate for you and watching that dude run he does not run like Tommy he does not run like Tom Brady but I love the rail routes you came back to it consistently like I love the fact that you'll call listen Florida State's Got Talent up and down the roster so like game planning for them like how much could you put in you know just being game one and what did you feel comfortable comfortable with going into the game yeah we tried to you know look at what they did obviously last year uh in certain games where we felt like you know the the the team ran similar offense to what we we were going to run and so you know we looked at the whole year but we really concentrated on a few games and so I think that we we didn't put the whole kitchen kitchen sink in there because like you said we weren't really sure exactly what they were going to do and then they they had a game the week before against Georgia Tech and Georgia Tech you know Brent and those guys did a great job against him and you know we looked at that game and put some things in so you know the guy's executed Tommy is a very Dynamic player on BC QB Thomas Castellanos and he's really just he's got the right mindset uh for for that position because he really does try to get better every day like he every day you know even when he goes to practice he treats it like a game even though it's not a game he treat he treats practice like a game he tries to you know really improve every single day so he's a great guy to coach and another thing too I loved about watching him was he is a freak athlete like you watch him run and he looks like he's in fast forward but he tries to stay in the pocket you you can tell like he wants to work there first which is great because most guys nowadays are they're trying to get out of that thing as fast as possible yeah I think that's key that's a great point you know that obviously you you know so much about football you've seen it playing the defensive line you know when you have a dynamic guy that can hang in the pocket for a little while and then the rush Lane gets a little bit out of whack and you know he can find that little that little crease to take off if he needs to I think he's done a good job of that that's going to have to continue like his patience in the pocket and then having the Instinct of when to when to run and when to throw I think is a big deal for us moving forward yeah it's miserable to play the first play and then the second play and the third play with a guy like that that can buy time but so when you're building now like you How NFL experience helps in College Football today spent so much time you know in the NFL you spent time in college like did your time in the NFL really help you now because nil and building rosters and and basically free agency and the way the kids are getting paid and just different things did that NFL experience now like do that set you up pretty good to deal with what you're dealing with now yeah there's a lot that you can take look you know obviously the money's not not not the same but I mean the the concept of um you know the the name image and likeness and how your team you know Works in that world the concept is can be similar and so you know I don't I don't really you know deal directly with the player when it comes to those types of things but we definitely have a system of you know basically let let's reward the guys that have that have really you know bled for us you know the older guys that that are good locker room guys that have you know done done really good things at BC and then from there you know it's kind of a tiered system and uh you know I think that's a big thing for us we're definitely in the nil world you know I think people in recruiting sometimes use that against us BC's not no we are I mean we are we have a lot of people here that take a lot of pride in wanting a a winning football program so you know we have a good Collective called friends of the Heights and they do a great job and you know so we're in that world it'll never be what we're all about because we have in Boston we have uh you know the city the downtown area is about 15 minutes away we got a great degree here we got a beautiful campus we do a lot in the community David like these kids work at homeless shelters um they they we have a a campus school on campus for for handicapped kids they work at that school they do a lot in the community so we have a lot more to offer than just nil and I think that's something we try to sell every day in recruiting dang right I would too all right coach just a couple more questions yeah um you spent time with some unbelievable coaches and on working with Nick Saban you recently spent time with Nick Sabin like is there something that stuck out stuck out with your time with Nick that you're like oh man I love the way he does that or and something that you that you use now yeah there's no doubt I mean there's several things that that that Nick did that were just you know awesome I mean he was very very organized he was very um you know disciplined when it came to you know meeting time uh practice time you know weightroom time and recruiting time like it was a very organized system by the time I got there right it was a machine right and so I think that's one of the things I took like hey let's be very consistent with our schedule so that the players know that the players know what's coming next like they there's no if fans or butts about it like this is going to be the way practice is this is you know this is when we're going to meet this when we're gonna lift all those different things I think that was huge I think the other thing I took from him David was he recruited every single day he didn't just recruit like you know every other week or every other day he recruited 365 days a year and he recruited on Christmas he recruited didn't matter Thanksgiving he was he was either going to zoom with a recruit watch a recruit talk to a high school coach or do something that had to do with recruiting and that's one of the things that we definitely do here we we try to chip away at recruiting every single day and I think that so far that's been good for us all right last one um bellich on working with Bill Belichick spending time with him in the NFL obviously a brilliant mind um you know what did you take away from him and learn from him yeah you just said it like he he was um you know a very very smart I mean you said it brilliant guy I mean this guy could could in in one conversation he could talk to you about nickel defense uh he could talk to you about the no hudle offense and then all a sudden shift over to salary cap and you you know contracts and and guarantees and percentage of this and I mean it was just unbelievable his brain his brain power uh and the amount of things you could learn from him from everything from how to prepare a team for a game to the draft process to you know the economics of the NFL to coaching quarterback you know like he he had it all and I think that's something that you had two notebooks at at the Patriots you had your game plan book for the weekly stuff and then you had your bellich checkbook and if you were smart enough you were taking double notes because if you if you ever wanted to be a head coach this was a guy that could could really help you do that so I I took a lot from Bill it was awesome to work for him that that's that's definitely smart we got to learn on the job right to be ready for what's next I want to know I want to know how the suggestions go when you're in the when you're in the meeting room and and Bill's giving you a suggestion or Nick or they've told you how to do told you how to do something you're like you know I really want to do it this way though coach like how does that go with those two guys no no I mean when I went to work for Nick i' had been a NFL head coach for almost seven years and you know been a been a head coach at Penn State but you know I can remember I think it it I think I did it once once and only once and I never did it again ni ni I think you should try to look at it this way no no I I that was not going to happen no they they look it's the same with now you know Bill Bill would um you know have suggestions and things like that but they're not really suggestions you know what I mean they yeah Nick would have these are things that they want done they have a vision for their football team and I think that's something that I learned from them like they they wanted the team to look like this from a from a recruiting standpoint and from an X's and O's standpoint and so I was always very loyal to that and and wanted to do you know what they wanted us to do well coach knowing you you got a vision for your program and you guys are going to be successful because I know what kind of person you are and I know how much time you're going to put into this and how much the community is going to benefit so not a bad start one and0 a top 10 win that that's a pretty good uh pretty good debut for you coach I appreciate it David thank you it's good to see you again and catch up man you too brother have a good one