FOXBOROUGH, Mass. -- New England Patriots head coach Bill Belichick has spoken about his admiration for former Rutgers and Buccaneers coach Greg Schiano, and on Monday, he shared insight on one area in which Schiano has directly helped the Patriots.

Belichick explained during his weekly appearance on sports radio WEEI that when the Patriots moved their playbooks to iPads two to three years ago, "that was a big step" for him.

Enter Schiano.

"I'd say part of the confidence in that for me came from Coach Schiano in Tampa, because that's the way he did it," Belichick said on WEEI, answering a question from one of the hosts, Jerry Thornton. "A lot of our coaches felt comfortable with it. I had trouble turning the corner, but after talking to him and working with his staff, we exchanged some ideas that year together, and certainly trusted them to say, 'Here's what we did and this really wasn't a problem; you'll be all right with it.' That gave me a lot more confidence to do it.

"Our IT person, Dan Famosi, did a great job implementing that. Probably without a little bit of a push from me, that probably wouldn't have happened then."

Belichick explained that the concept of switching playbooks to iPads sounded good in theory, but "there's a big difference between somebody who's a tech person that says, 'This is going to be great' versus somebody like Coach Schiano who actually is a football person who's done it. When he says, 'You can do this, you can do that, because I've done it and our staff does it and our players do it,' that carries a lot more weight with me."

Schiano, who is working at ESPN as a football analyst, has been an annual visitor to the Patriots' facility. While coaching at Rutgers, he had Belichick's son Stephen on his team.