Tuesday 12/17/24
Bill Belichick is the new head football coach of UNC. When I first heard this was a done deal before it was officially a done deal, I thought I'll believe it when I see it--that is, after the university made the formal announcement (though this hasn't stopped Belichick from changing his mind in the past), because Belichick all but asks you to back out of hiring him because of his list of demands, but UNC acceded and I can't say that I see the logic in this for either side.
People think this is odd or beneath him. As I said after he was fired by the Patriots, he was likely done as an NFL coach. His reputation has plummeted in the years since Brady left, especially as Brady went on to win without him. His age is a factor, those aforementioned demands, the fact that he brings this entourage of cronies and cronies' kids and his kids with him is a factor.
I think him having a girlfriend--I didn't use quotes around the word, but come on--who is like fifty years his junior doesn't help him either. When I see a guy like this who looks like that doing something of that nature, I think he's either a very seedy guy or someone who is making bad choices and isn't a person to be trusted or counted on because they're a mess. And I think a university--a state university--should care about those optics. You're supposed to stand for things, be looked at to lead to some degree in your area/state. Set an example.
If he just wanted to coach at UNC, I don't think it's a big deal. Why can't you want to do the thing you do? I don't think UNC is a much better job than BC is. So, okay, how the mighty have fallen, but it's not like he doesn't have a say. He doesn't have to work/coach. He's seventy-two, has more money than he'll ever lead no matter how lavish he might want to be, and that's not how he seems.
I have heard that the deal is contingent on one of his kids being named UNC's head coach after he's done, but that can't be true. Or you'd think it can't be true. Then again, maybe it is. Belichick loves nepotism, but that is a terrible look if the university went for that. I can't see that they would.
Belichick coming up to Alumni Stadium with his team to coach against Bill O'Brien's BC Eagles in front of 20,000 people. I don't know. That's how to envision. But I guess it's a real possibility now. Belichick has expressed surprise that he hasn't drawn more--or maybe he means any--interest from NFL teams, but as I said as soon as his time with the Patriots came to an end, the only way he'd get an NFL coaching job is if someone did something stupid and desperate, which was a possibility. It only takes one fool.
Belichick had the perfect situation, the right leaders, the right coaches, the right veterans, and he succeeded. I don't think he would have anywhere else with anyone else. That doesn't change that he was masterful for a while there. But this was back in the early 2000s. After 2004, I think it was really Brady. Yes, they had other excellent players, but it wasn't like those earlier teams, those earlier game plans, schemes, contingency plans (what Belichick did in 2003 with those injuries the Patriots had might be the most impressive coaching performance I've ever seen in any sport), carried over into the following years and the next decade.
Brady became a Super Bowl machine. If there was any doubt, there was what he did at the age he did it with a whole new team, a whole new organization, a new coach, in a new conference, during COVID, when it was theoretically harder for a team to come together and develop chemistry. That really hurt Belichick in my view. He went with Cam Newton, when no one else wanted that player, and Cam Newton made Mac Jones--who was awful--look good by comparison. Belichick kept cutting corners, he was an arrogant fat cat, devoted to cronyism and nepotism, and it wasn't good. (But Belichick last year, with the wheels off of the bus, was still better than Jerod Mayo this year.)
I never put much stock in the idea that Belichick wasn't a good coach without Brady, but those last four years with the Patriots--and even the final campaign with Brady--did sway me a considerable amount. How could they not? The sample size over Belichick's career was definitely big enough. Which isn't to say he wasn't great for a while and maybe the best an NFL coach has ever been. But then we're getting into nuanced thinking, and people don't do nuanced thinking.
As for what Belichick is up to--because he's usually up to something--what I would say is the move is a result of not having options. I had remarked that no NFL team would want him and that's what this is. It's not some purity of coaching thing, or because his dad was an assistant at UNC in the 1950s and he's going home again.
If, say, the Panthers offered him a head coaching NFL job come next spring, he'd take it, despite what he said at his press conference about not leaving (that such a routine thing now for coaches and players to lie about that it's essentially this de facto remark that has no currency and in which no stock is really put; guarantees about victories are becoming similar--they don't mean what they used to and there's very little holding of feet to fire with either such statement when they don't pan out).
The college game has lost so much appeal--in my view, anyway, and certainly for me--because it's not the college game anymore. It's the NFL minor leagues. There's no school spirit, and while that may sound lame to some--and this is coming from someone who hates academia--I think there is something compelling about commitment and people being in that thing together; a college is a community and community does matter.
UNC looks worse here than Belichick, in my estimation. They were uneasy having a coach in his seventies, so they went out and got another coach who is virtually the same age as the coach they just jettisoned because this septuagenarian was a bigger name. When you bring in Belichick, you bring in all of his crap. His hangers-on, the retinue, the pouting, the ego. The ACC is soft. It doesn't take much to reach that conference championship game. Hell, even BC could get there in the next few years if O'Brien stays and the program improves under his watch as it appeared to start to this season. UNC has a cupcake schedule for 2025. Could they go 10-2? Sure. And that might get them into the twelve-team playoff. I wouldn't bet on it, but I'd also not be especially surprised.
Best case scenario for the university, Belichick is a short-term fix, and then you go back to what you are now--playing in the Fenway Bowl here in the near future--in 2027. In other words, I think the hire delays getting on a track of longer-term success--whatever that means; call it an average of eight wins a year.
But these people were star-struck, I guess, and they let Belichick dictate terms--because I have no doubt he did. Belichick runs roughshod over you. People are still talking about him returning to the NFL and I wonder if they mean just as a coach, with no control beyond that--because who would seriously turn over the whole operation to him?--which I can't see him being okay with. Maybe if he felt he was slowing down and that's what he could handle, but even when Belichick slows down--and he has shown how much he's slowed down by the amount of corners he cuts now--I don't think he thinks he's slowed down. A lot of things can make you slow down. I'm not singling out age. Success can make you slow down. Ego can make you slow down. False praise.
As I've written before, he could have had a whole new exciting chapter in his life. He could have written a couple books--autobiography, volume on the ins and outs of coaching--had a show, a podcast, been a leading guest on programs, done speaking tours, but he strikes me as someone who can't be with himself. And while you wouldn't be off on your own all the time doing those things, you'd be around people less--throngs of guys who looked at you as their boss--and I don't think he's ever grown up enough--or will ever grow up enough--to do that.
I see him as a sad figure, I suppose. I don't think this is about the love of coaching. I think college football is gross now, too--or grosser, if you prefer--and he'll play right into that. First order of business: buy a quarterback from somewhere with the NIL money. Belichick doesn't much like quarterbacks, but despite thinking you can win with just a serviceable guy in the NFL--in part because of his brilliant coaching--he'll understand that you need that BMOC QB at that level.
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