Ernie Adams ’71 is currently serving as the interim football coach for the 2026 season.
Can I please have your name, role and graduation year?
I am Ernie Adams, member of the class of 1971 and I am the interim head football coach at Phillips Academy. And I am the head football coach but this is for this year for the coming 2026 season.
To start at the start, what was your experience with football at Andover and how did that impact your coaching career?
Well, I was a bit slow and a little bit stiff so I was the good kid who tried hard. I’m not a real good player. But I was obviously extremely interested in football. I went to PA for four years. My senior year we had a PG who I ended up playing next to on the offensive line, Bill Belichick. So that’s where we started our fifty five year friendship. Right there at Andover. I had a chance to learn from a great coach at Andover, Steve Sorota, who impacted me in a lot of ways. Even though I wasn’t a very good player, Andover football was very important to me and I got blue blood flowing through my arteries.
Something that people aren’t necessarily aware of as of now is that you’ve been quite involved with the football team over the past few years. I was talking to the captains and they were talking about how you’ve been especially involved as last year’s linebackers coach. How’s that experience been?
It’s been great. I always have a warm spot in my heart for anything Andover. Largely because students, like you, are wonderful to deal with. It’s a lot of fun for me being on campus working with students. A lot of alumni do volunteer work for the school but I get to do the fun stuff. I actually get to work with a bunch of guys who are trying to do something hard and I try to help them.
Obviously before coming to the high school level you had a long illustrious career as a research coach with the New England Patriots. How has it helped coming here?
A lot of stuff we would do in terms of strategy, tactics, playing the game. Stuff that works that works in the National Football League is a lot of the same stuff that works in high school. Obviously it’s different when you’re in an NFL team. You’ve got players who are twenty seven, twenty eight years old, they have really good college careers behind them and all that. We don’t have that at Andover but it’s the same game. I don’t care what level you’re at, high school, college or pro, the feels are you know fifty three in a third yard wide, hundred yard long… It’s the same game in a lot of ways but dealing with younger players.
Would you say there are any main differences or similarities that stick out?
You know if you can control the game and run the football you’re probably gonna do pretty well. In the National Football League you have extremely gifted professional athletes. The skill can be unbelievable at times which isn’t necessarily what you’re going to have on a high school level but things are relative. [At] the Andover football team, we don’t have professional football players. If things work in professional football they’re going to work for the most part at Andover.
One big upcoming change is that the role of football coach is going to transition to a more year-round position? How is the planning going for that?
I think in reality at most of the schools there’s usually the head football coach that will be an important part of their responsibilities. Fifty years ago a football coach was teaching four classes, working in a dorm and in a couple of major faculty committees. I’m sure you heard the old “triple threat” which is kind of going by the wayside, I’m not sure if that’s for the best. But when I was at Andover our head coach was Steve Sorota who by the time I got there had been here for thirty years. He was the head coach of the track team, both the indoor and outdoor ones. He taught a couple PE classes and that was basically his job so [that] he could devote a significant amount of his time to football. So however you get to it, because football coaching has a lot to it. It’s involved, it takes time, the head coach whatever you call it is gonna be putting a considerable amount of his work time towards football.
What are your plans for this year’s football team?
I told the team when I was introduced to them last Monday that my role as a coach is to give the players a good plan and teach them how to execute it. My number one goal is to get the Andover team to play as close as possible to our maximum potential.
Is there any other restructuring going on within the management or is this the main change?
I’ve been the main change. There are a few things that we’ve worked with the athletic department about. My top priority at the moment: the football fields in Siberia aren’t really safe enough and play hard football on. I wanna make sure that the football team gets access to the turf field everyday. As you probably know on Wednesdays you may have a varsity field hockey game, a JV field hockey game which is great. Obviously if you’re playing a game you have the entire field and for the football team that’s a problem for us [so] we have to go on the grass. There will be Wednesdays in the fall where we go on the turf field later after the games. Everybody may be off and ready to go for study hours. So just getting out and rearranging the schedule has been important.
Are you involved in the scouting process for the new coach and athletes?
Yes. I’m sure you know, the admissions and acceptances [for students] go out on March 10th so we’re getting up there. For this coming weekend against Exeter there’ll be a few potential students coming in and seeing the school and not just walking around and looking at the buildings. It’s really important for them to get the feel of what it’s like being a student at Andover so we’ve been trying to make sure they get to see that. As you know, coming to Andover is a big decision so I think it would be totally wrong to act like a used car salesman and so we’ll show our potential students what Andover’s about and they’ll make the decision.
Apart from the standard seven PGs are there any other football recruits upcoming?
One of the great things about Andover is that we accept students at all levels. We have people coming in each class, of each year. We love to get every year a couple new players who can play football, and a couple new uppers who can play football. You need kids who start as juniors so that there’s a constant pipeline because football has the biggest team on campus. We have the most players. We need a constant flow of students who are interested who may have some football ability.
Anything you would like to add?
It’s always fun being back at Andover and coaching a football team is totally enjoyable for me.
