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Bill Belichick didn’t wait around for a call that he might not get from an NFL team.
With no guarantees that another opportunity might come his way — only the Atlanta Falcons interviewed Belichick last offseason — and unsure whether he could find the right fit in the NFL, the 72-year-old future Hall of Fame coach decided to go back to school.
Belichick took his eight Super Bowl rings to North Carolina on a mission to build a college program the way he constructed two dynasties during 24 seasons with the New England Patriots. It starts with doing things his way. The Patriot Way is legendary. Perhaps it’ll translate into the Tar Heel way.
That’s to be determined. But Belichick is back doing what he loves: coaching. And, he’s going to run the show with his guys around him. An NFL team giving Belichick full control the way he had in New England seemed unlikely.
Success at North Carolina could change that thinking.
For now, Belichick’s quest to break Don Shula’s all-time record for most wins in the NFL is on hold. He’s 15 victories short but the buyout clause in his college contract — a $10 million fee if done before June 2025 and $1 million after that date — leaves the window open for a return to the league.
If Belichick stays in college or retires without returning to the NFL, his legacy is already cemented. Winning at North Carolina will only enhance his reputation. Losing won’t impact his NFL resume.
“He’s one of the all-time great coaches. What he’s done for the NFL and the game, we all know where he’ll end up — in the Hall of Fame with a gold jacket,” Dallas Cowboys executive Stephen Jones said Wednesday shortly before Belichick agreed on a five-year deal with North Carolina that pays him $10 million in base and supplemental salary annually with up to $3.5 million in bonuses per year.
Belichick has his detractors. There’s no denying he couldn’t win without Tom Brady. He was 29-39 and had no playoff wins without No. 12 in his final four seasons with the Patriots.
Critics have labeled him a cheater because of the Spygate and Deflategate scandals. He overlooked Aaron Hernandez’s issues. He was tough on players, even alienating Brady in the end and letting him walk him away in free agency in 2020 only to see him lead the Tampa Bay Buccaneers to a Super Bowl in his first season there.
But Belichick instilled in players the importance of doing their job and presided over an unprecedented two-decade run of dominance that withstood changing times, free agency, salary-cap restrictions and much more.
Brady has always maintained how important Belichick was for his career, giving him credit for helping him become one of the best players in sports.
Now, Belichick is onto Chapel Hill in a surprise twist after he spent most of the NFL season reinventing himself as an entertaining and engaging analyst. Belichick is a football genius and his knowledge came across on television. But he also displayed a fun personality, trading quips with the Mannings and cracking jokes with Pat McAffee.
“College kind of came to me this year,” Belichick said at his introductory news conference. “I didn’t necessarily go and seek it out. I had many coaches, probably a couple dozen coaches, talk to me and say, ‘Can we come down and talk to you about these things?’ Let’s call it the salary cap of pro football relative to college football. The headsets, the green dot, the two-minute warning, the tablets on the sideline. Those were all rules changes this year for college football that were either or the same or similar to what we had in the NFL. These coaches said, ‘Hey coach can we talk to you about how you did this? How you did that? How did you use this?’.
“As those conversations started and then the personnel conversations started relative to salary cap and how you spend whatever the allotment of money you have. I’d say that started to make me a lot more aware of it because the first thing I would have to do is learn about it. …. As you learn different things about different programs you start to put it all together. There is some common threads and there’s some variables.”
How will he do as a college coach? Nobody knows yet.
Three of Belichick’s former players were skeptical before he took the job.
“There’s a lot of things he can do, and obviously he’s tremendous, and even showing his personality. But getting out there on the recruiting trail and dealing with all these college kids, that would be …” Brady said before trailing off during a conversation on Fox’s NFL pregame show last Sunday.
Fellow former Patriots Rob Gronkowski and Julian Edelman also wondered the same.
“Can you imagine NIL, and all that nonsense?” Gronkowski said.
Edelman added: “Can you imagine Bill on a couch recruiting an 18-year-old?”
But Belichick doesn’t have to recruit kids on visits. These are new times in college sports. The NIL has dramatically changed the landscape. Plus, Belichick’s name is enough. Just like Deion Sanders at Colorado.
“I think it could be great for this game, honestly, if he can find a way to make college football more like this in terms of what’s being asked of the coaches, the recruiting staff, the personnel, the NIL, and all those different things,” Tampa Bay Buccaneers offensive coordinator Liam Cohen said. “If he can make it a little bit less demanding on some of the coaches and create a great atmosphere and have success, I think it’s great for our game. It’s pretty cool to see, actually.”
Time for Belichick to do his job.
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