I spent far too much of the night watching the NFL playoffs.

Like, I have a day job, and the games began at 10 p.m. here in Abu Dhabi and ended at about 5 a.m.

But I came to a couple of conclusions — or arrived at old conclusions anew — on two prominent NFL coaches who were at work in the playoffs.

Bill Belichick looks like a thoroughly unpleasant human being, a conclusion I reached years ago when I first encountered him at a Super Bowl press conference — perhaps as an assistant with the New York Giants.

Condescending, curt, perpetually annoyed, a guy with a face that defines the word “grimace”. He looks as if he has migraine-onset 24/7, and it would be an undeserved compliment to describe him as “gruff” because gruff implies some warmth underneath. I’m fairly sure Belichick has no warmth underneath.

And the cutoff hoodie he wears on the New England Patriots sidelines, part of a studied rejection of NFL sideline dress rules (which once often included suits; gee, I miss Tom Landry) are just tiresome. We get it; you march to your own drummer. You’re complex. And a slob. Got it. Feel free now to wear a sweatshirt with sleeves.

Meanwhile, Pete Carroll, now coach of the Seattle Seahawks, looks like he is running for office, when on the sidelines. Freshly showered, well-rested, a guy who stays in shape and is eager to meet the world.

He is one of those minority of people so full of energy and so eternally upbeat, that he sucks you into his aura of positivity. Remember how Steve Martin once said something like, “you can’t be gloomy while playing a banjo”? Well, you can’t be bored and depressed with Pete Carroll around.

I love this guy, and my evidence was 50, 60, 100 press conferences I attended while he was the coach at USC, and watching him at football practices, sprinting from drill to drill like he is rushing between the good rides at Disneyland just before closing time … and on the sidelines, watching him interact with players, the back-slapping and words of congratulation and encouragement. The whole “we’ll get ’em next time!” approach to the game. To life.

Pete Carroll wants to be loved. And he so often succeeds. He makes a point of learning names and using them. Players, of course, but journalists, too, and probably parents and fans. It is no exaggeration to describe him as “charismatic”, in that having him around makes everyone in the room feel better. About everything. His football team. The economy. Yourself.

All you have to do is try really hard, and value your teammates, and work with them, and attack everything with energy. It is such a sunny outlook on life. The man is almost impossible not to admire, not to want see succeed, and I bet 95 percent of USC fans still feel that way, even after Pete left USC and the football program almost immediately went on NCAA probation. Does anyone hold it against Pete? Really?

I know for sure for whom I would rather play.

Let’s see, Belichick dour and judgmental, not a brotherly bone in his body. His approach is the oldest and most primitive: “Do as instructed, or the consequences will be painful to you.” Coercion. He also has been known to bend the rules, if he thinks he can get away with it.

Pete wants you to win for yourself. Well, and for your peers, and for your coaching staff. Be the best you can be right along with me. He praises; I have yet to see him give a death stare that sometimes looks like Belichick’s default face. And he wants to win fair and square, and to him that often will go back to that indefinable “we wanted it more” which is the sort of thing Pete Carroll believes in and Belichick no doubt rejects as “sucker” talk.

But who is the better coach? “Better” defined here by victories and defeats?

Have to go with Belichick. He and his system defeated a pretty good Houston Texans team tonight/this morning with little muss or fuss. I had not been watching the Patriots much this season, but that hurry-up style, after a big play, is inspired. (A couple of years after he also changed the game by using only one real receiver and going with dual tight ends). I know he’s a defense guy, and he may have had nothing to do with the implementation of that offensive approach — but you know he hired the coordinator who did.

His Patriots teams are nearly always execution machines (in the football sense), rarely making mistakes, and honed down to the millionth of an inch as tools, sharp, precise, lethal.

Pete? Not so much. He approaches games with sheer energy, and his teams look like puppies cavorting on the sideline … but when faced with an opposing team with as much talent as Pete has brought to the fight (which happens most weeks in the NFL), he is likely to have some trouble. He will make the random fairly obvious mistakes (like twice eschewing field goals today and getting no points at all in a game that ended 30-28). I am fairly sure he will never win a Super Bowl. Belichick has won three and played for two more.

But for whom would I rather play? Pete.

Easy call.

Those notions about the joy of a process being the journey, not the destination? Pete gets it. The journey with him can last years, and it is nearly always fun and uplifting.

The journey with Belichick looks like one of fear and loathing. You might end up holding the Vince Lombardi trophy, but “winning is the ultimate fun”? I don’t believe that. Belichick apparently does. So it makes sense that his team has a game next week, and Pete’s does not.