NFL great Michael Lombardi says he has “loved” his time at Essendon this week immersing himself in the unique environment of The Hangar.

The analyst and former executive and coaching assistant has spent the week providing his insights, expertise and observations for the Bombers as the club looks to continue to grow across all areas of the organisation.

While American and Australian football may be vastly different in many ways, Lombardi says he has been able to draw many similarities between Essendon and the several franchises he has been a part of in his 37-year career in the NFL.  

“I love it, I think it’s been great for me,” Lombardi said on SEN on Thursday morning.

“First of all, professional sport is like any other business.

“Even though it’s a different game called ‘football’, there are still a lot of similarities with what happens off the field; it’s player development, it’s leadership, it’s culture – all of those things come into play.”

The three-time Super Bowl champion has grasped our game well, developing a new respect for the intricacies of the sport and the efforts of those within it.

“I’ve loved it, the people have been welcoming me with open arms and I’ve learned a lot about the game and it’s been fun.

“I can understand (the sport). As a novice, when you watch it for the first or second time, you don’t really understand there’s so much strategy to it.

“But then as you get immersed into it and you learn, you have great respect for what the coaches do and the players as well.”

Lombardi has worked in elite sporting environments for decades including a three-year stint at the New England Patriots from 2014 to 2016 working as an assistant to the coaching staff under infamous coach Bill Belichick.

Belichick holds the record for most Super Bowl successes as a head coach (six, including alongside Lombardi in 2017) and is considered as one of the greatest sporting leaders of all time, but Lombardi says the leading coach is still keen to learn what he can from Essendon’s program.

Lombardi said the professionalism of the club is “unbelievable” and he expects to take plenty of high-performance lessons back to the United States.

“Before I made the trip here, I was talking to Belichick and I was saying, ‘I’m going to go down to Australia and I’m going to talk to them’,” Lombardi said.

“He was saying, ‘Take meticulous notes on their training program’. You guys are so far ahead of where we are in terms of athletic training and performance endurance, it stunned me.

“I walked in with Xavier Campbell, the CEO, and you have this high-altitude room and I was just stunned.

“We don’t play in high altitude but it makes so much sense to have it, because it helps your training.”

According to Lombardi, one of the secrets behind Belichick’s success is that constant hunger for knowledge and improvement.

“If you’re not willing to adapt and change, you’re going to fall behind, and I think that’s one of Belichick’s greatest strengths."