The resurrection of Bill Belichick
Some people take the bridge when they retire. But then again, Bill Belichick has never been the retirement type. After leaving his job as head coach of the New England Patriots in January, a position he held for twenty-four seasons, he only briefly stepped out of the public eye. Despite his laconic and sullen public image — Belichick is almost as famous for stonewalling reporters as he is for his defensive schemes — he was suddenly ubiquitous; HadithEven smiling, sort of. He made jokes with his former enemies Eli and Peyton Manning on ESPN’s “Manningcast.” He scowled as Pat McAfee kneeled toward him on the popular McAfee show. He became a co-host of “Inside the NFL” on the CW. He had a weekly show with Underdog Fantasy. He even replaced Tom Brady on Jim Gray’s SiriusXM show “Let’s Go” when Brady went to Fox earlier this year.
Some of the concern was humanitarian. In Brady’s Roast, on Netflix, Belichick saved a few winning zingers for himself. And when he talked about the details of football, he did so with the kind of patience, clarity and insight that revealed what made him such a good teacher. It was clear that he loved football, that he missed training, and that he couldn’t leave the game behind. But it was difficult to understand exactly what all this exposure was about. “When Jim presented the opportunity, I said, ‘Let’s go,’” Belichick said in a statement when the deal to join Gray was announced. “When people say: ‘Let’s go!’ It conveys a sense of camaraderie and teamwork as all participants share the same goals and excitement. And that’s exactly how I feel when I join the Let’s Go! Team at SiriusXM.” This from the man nicknamed Death by his former boss.
Was he bored? Was he keeping his name in the public eye, desperate to land another coaching job? It was no secret that he wanted to lead another team in the NFL, even though he turned 72 in April. But only one team, the Atlanta Falcons, interviewed him for a coaching position at the end of last season. Belichick thought the job was his up until the moment the Falcons announced the hiring of Raheem Morris, when in fact he wasn’t even among the finalists, according to espn. But he didn’t give up. he It is said He continued to meet weekly on Zoom with his old assistants, discussing schematic shifts, recruiting, film and potential landing sites. But the problem was that none of the teams with looming vacancies seemed to share Belichick’s eagerness to return to the sidelines. Even if you don’t win six Super Bowl rings, as Belichick did — eight, if you count the two he won as an assistant, which Belichick does — it’s easy to feel disdain.
Maybe he had pinochle. He may have collected seashells on Nantucket. Maybe he volunteered to babysit his grandchildren, or enjoyed the company of his girlfriend of twenty-four years. He seems to have spent more time with his son Steve, who is currently the defensive coordinator at the University of Washington, which means stalking the Huskies’ practice facilities, developing practice plans, and taking notes on the complex workings of college football. , it seems. (His other son, Brian, is still the Patriots’ coach, which is not the most welcoming sight for Bell.)
Then, earlier this month, rumors surfaced that Belichick was interviewing for the coaching job at the University of North Carolina. There was no real precedent for this, as the NFL legend jumped into the college ranks near the end of his career, with no prior experience. Aside from wearing Huskies gear while helping his son, the closest Belichick came to becoming a college coach was watching his father, who was one of their own. Sports journalist Oliver Connolly reported that Belichick had given UNC a four-hundred-page “bible,” covering every aspect of the program, from organizational structure to minimum employee salaries. Belichick has denied it, but even the idea was a vivid example of what made Belichick such a powerful figure in football, and what now makes teams reluctant to cede too much control to him. But UNC is a mediocre team, in a late conference, at a school mired in a power struggle between its athletic director and its board of trustees.
It was announced on Wednesday that he had been appointed by the United Nations Command.
Will you succeed? In some ways, it has already happened. UNC is a basketball school. Its football program had not won the NCAA’s Atlantic Coast Conference since 1980. Around the time of Mack Brown’s firing, at the end of November, UNC had only ten committed football recruits coming in for the year 2025. A number of starters have announced their openness to a transfer. But Belichick’s arrival now brings a level of excitement and interest that will impact the program immediately. Even with the high price Belichick is said to be demanding (a five-year contract worth fifty million dollars; a twenty-million-dollar “name, image and likeness” package for football; and no doubt competitive salaries for a large number of employees), the money will come. Boosters will compete for the chance to shake hoodie He delivers. Aside from Deion Sanders, Belichick is suddenly the biggest name in college football. It may be as hard to imagine Belichick going down the recruiting trail, trading memes with wide receivers, as it was once as a reporter on The CW, but there are plenty of parents who would love to have their kids coached by the legend. , and the many young players who will be dazzled by the flashy hints of a future pro career, through all those Super Bowl rings. And when UNC opens the 2025 season, Aug. 30, against Texas Christian University, the stadium will be packed. Viewership is likely to rise. UNC Football will feel important in a way it never has before.
As for Belichick, the man who made “Do Your Job” a slogan for the Patriots dynasty, he’s getting a job. He got the chance to run a program, with a degree of control that — it became clear — wasn’t available to him on an NFL team. (Jerry Jones wouldn’t bequeath him his kingdom.) He’ll be surrounded by his trusted staff: Michael Lombardi, a confidant who previously worked alongside Belichick on the Cleveland Browns and Patriots, is already hired as UNC’s general manager, and there’s talk of Belichick bringing his son Steve with him. (Belichick demurred, for the moment, when asked about that.) He will do the training.
At Belichick’s inaugural news conference, he said the coaching college was a “dream come true.” It may be hard to imagine that he had dreams, or even many feelings, but his dedication to training was never in doubt. Outside the press room, he always encouraged young people to pursue their interests. He won’t be a friend to his players, but he will certainly instill a sense of responsibility in them and try to put them in positions to succeed. This is what Do Your Job is all about: controlling what you can control, knowing your role, and doing it well. Belichick has a track record of being able to identify talent outside the usual grids, develop lesser-known and undersized players quickly, and plan around his team’s strengths or dispassionately weed out its weaker members. This is how he built winning Patriots teams. There is every reason to believe he will take the development program seriously.
That’s Belichick’s argument, especially in light of the changes to college football. The introduction of ‘name, image and likeness’ contracts, payments to players and a transfer portal means it feels more like a professional game than ever before. Who better to guide the program than the second-winningest coach in NFL history? Before announcing the appointment, he said: placed His vision for McAfee. “The college program will serve as a pipeline to the NFL for players who have the ability to play in the NFL,” the former Patriots coach said Monday. “It will be a professional program: training, nutrition, scheme, training and techniques that can be transferred to the NFL. It will be an NFL program at the college level.”
This is not a completely new idea. Schools like the University of Georgia and Ohio State roughly follow this model, as did the University of Alabama under Belichick’s friend Nick Saban. But there are also reasons to believe this could go badly. After all, it’s the college game no NFL. It’s much more chaotic. The transfer portal is similar to free agency only insofar as it makes almost every player a free agent. It can be difficult to convince an eighteen-year-old to join a multi-year development program when he or she can transfer to another school once the season is over, due to the promise of more playing time or more money. Why would they sit and listen to a coach whose style is described as making his players feel insecure and uncomfortable? And much of that money, far from resembling an NFL contract, moves through a chaotic web of often unenforceable rules. One of Belichick’s great gifts is to gain small but multiplying advantages by living within (or, in light of) limits Disagreements The Patriots were involved in it, and perhaps on it.) It’s hard to use rules to your advantage when there are no rules.
The truth is, it’s not clear how great Belichick is at running an NFL program anymore, anyway. The final years of his Patriots tenure were a long record of mistrust and mistakes. Tom Brady may have figured it out, but that was a long time ago. His more recent picks have been disappointing. He spent free agent money on the wrong players. For all of his sophisticated offensive constructs in his first twenty years with the Patriots — his ability to manipulate tempo, his use of the spread offense and hybrid tight ends, his ability to recognize defenses and create mismatches — after Brady’s departure, Belichick struggled to adapt. His offensive plan focused on points The strength of the midfielders and failed to build their confidence. The Patriots finished the 2023 season, Belichick’s final and worst, with a 4-13 record.
It is perhaps noteworthy that when Belichick described his ambitions for McAfee’s then-theoretical college program, he did not say his goal was to win a national championship, or even to win a lot. He probably thought that was understandable, given his past. Or perhaps more realistically, he will not suddenly shift UNC to Georgia, and that something else is at stake for him now. After the announcement, a story on ESPN, sourced from his inner circle, framed the UNC job as his rejection of the NFL — not the other way around. In his first news conference, Belichick brought up the sweatshirt his father wore when he coached at UNC in the 1950s, and told the story of how his first words as a child were “Beat Duke.” One way college football differs from the NFL is that rivalries are important, and for most programs, success can be defined by something other than playoff results. On the same day Belichick’s hiring was announced, the Duke Football Team acquired Darian Mensah, the top quarterback in the transfer portal. No one is talking about it now. That kind of triviality is the glory of college football. ♦