Why is Bill Belichick the new head football coach for the University of North Carolina? Reporting done by The Athletic's Jeff Howe, combined with the fact that no professional team offered Belichick a job last offseason, would indicate that Belichick was forced into a college job because the NFL no longer wants him. But sources close to the man himself would like to tell a different story, and have done so through ESPN's Seth Wickersham. No, the NFL didn't turn its back on Belichick; he turned his back on it. "This is a big fuck you to the NFL," is how one of Belichick's confidants described the decision to Wickersham.
OK, sure. It doesn't really matter if any of us believe that a guy who is just 15 victories away from breaking Don Shula's all-time wins record willingly walked away from the NFL in order to coach football at a basketball school. What matters is that Belichick, and the people around him, seem to truly believe that.
In Wickersham's story, he described a weekly video call that Belichick has been having with former assistants and hangers-on. Matt Patricia, Josh McDaniels, and Michael Lombardi were a few names identified as regular attendees on these calls. You can probably guess a few others. What should worry UNC fans is that this crew of football fellas seems to have spent as much time talking ball as they did assuring Belichick that the NFL would be lucky to have him, and not the other way around. One confidant told Wickersham that Belichick was "disgusted" by the fact that NFL owners seemed indifferent to hiring him. Another had this to say:
Says a source with knowledge of his thinking: "I'll go be the highest draw in college football, and will have the greatest coach in the ACC, instead of you guys who don't want [him] anymore because there are people who don't deserve to be empowered. ... Everyone is running away from college football. I think Bill thinks this landscape is better for him. ... More transactional and less relational. In his mind, this is better for me."
It's not hard to see this as a crew of yes-men constructing a new reality for the boss, because it benefits them, too. All of these guys became failures the moment they let go of Belichick's coattails. At this point, fans basically revolt whenever they hear Matt Patricia's name pop up in their team's staffing search. What better way to grab back on than to gas up the old man and push him toward a program that he gets to rebuild?
Belichick's move has already paid off for some in his inner circle. Failed Cleveland Browns head coach Freddie Kitchens, who has a "long-standing relationship" with Belichick and was already on staff at UNC under Mack Brown last season when the team went 6-6, has been retained. Lombardi, who hasn't worked with Belichick since 2016 and has spent the years since turning himself into one of the dumbest football pundits working, has been named as the UNC football program's general manager.
For anyone who cares about UNC football, this is the cost of doing business. You receive a Hall of Fame coach in his twilight years, on the condition that his Wack Pack comes along for the ride. Remember all those failed coaching hires who couldn't connect with their NFL players? Well, now they get a do-over with college-aged talent instead. There is a non-zero chance that Joe Judge will be on your sideline in some capacity. The UNC football program may one day become the toast of the ACC under Belichick's guidance, but for now it appears to be functioning well as a work program for NFL washouts who are good at telling an old man what he wants to hear.
