Why Bill Belichick, perhaps the greatest coach in NFL history, didn't get a job

Robert Kraft and Bill Belichick smiled as they stood before a packed crowd at Gillette Stadium on Jan. 11 and emotionally recalled some of their fondest memories of their historic 24-year partnership with the New England Patriots.

The partnership between the team owner and the coach had just ended and it was an opportune time for the breakup. But if there had been any caveat, it was when Kraft said how difficult it would be to see Belichick “in a cut-off hoodie on the sideline” for another team.

The idea felt inevitable at the time, with the Patriots one of eight teams with a vacancy and the NFL's most successful coach on the market. Belichick, with 333 career wins, is 15 wins away from breaking Don Shula's record, and that seemed like a clear draw for ownership — on top of his coaching acumen, of course.

However, that perception fell flat. The remaining coaching vacancies were filled this week, and it appears Belichick won't be on the NFL sidelines for the first time in half a century.

For all the positives Belichick could bring to a new organization, numerous sources around the league, who were granted anonymity to speak freely without retaliation, cited a handful of reasons why the coaching legend remains out of a job, and it goes deeper than just the fact that he is not. is about to turn 72.

The Atlanta Falcons were the only known suitor with serious interest, but they hired Raheem Morris after interviewing Belichick a few times.

At one point, it seemed publicly as if Belichick and the Falcons were building momentum toward a partnership. However, sources close to both sides were cautious throughout the process.

I've been trying to get people to tell Belichick to the Falcons for a week now, but that was never a sure thing. Both sides were gathering information on each other, open to seeing where things would go, and the Falcons planned to keep their options wide open.

— Jeff Howe (@jeffphowe) January 25, 2024

They were all on a fact-finding mission to determine if the organization's power structure was the right fit to sustain success with Belichick, who had grown accustomed to total control over football operations, while Falcons owner Arthur Blank was about to leave his leadership structure intact to hold. .

Sources close to Belichick also cited a frosty relationship with Falcons president Rich McKay as the main reason the sides may have decided they could or could not work together.

One wonders why Belichick didn't just put his head down, adapt to another team's way of doing business and focus on coaching his way to fifteen more wins before retiring with a monopoly on major coaching records.

But if Belichick wasn't going to go out of his way to pitch Kraft on a way to turn around the Patriots' recent misfortunes, he certainly wouldn't be doing it to a relative stranger. League sources believed that Kraft might have been persuaded to keep Belichick for another season if the coach had committed to changing certain strategies in personnel, roster construction and his offensive vision, but Belichick was accustomed to a specific approach and didn't want to bend that far. .

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That's also relevant because it was related to the mutual fact-finding mission with the Falcons, and they were hardly alone among teams in the coaching market.

But most importantly, the Falcons were completely sold to Morris, according to a league source. Belichick's resume will surpass that of any coach — in an interview process, or historically — but his past performance was less important to the Falcons than what they thought Morris could bring to their future.

When the Falcons hired Morris, only the Seattle Seahawks and Washington Commanders had vacancies. At the time, league sources called it a gamble for both organizations to consider Belichick, and even those odds seemed generous.

Three main reasons were echoed by numerous sources around the league: Belichick's mishandling of the Patriots' quarterback situation in recent years, his desire to maintain total control of football operations and a growing concern about the coach's ability to to deal with this generation of players.

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At quarterback, people around the league still don't understand how Belichick could let Tom Brady leave in free agency, but the lack of a succession plan was almost as confusing. Belichick went the budget route with Cam Newton in 2020 and drafted Mac Jones in the 2021 first round, but failed to develop him to almost any measurable degree.

Jones had three offensive coordinators in three seasons, including Belichick's 2022 decision to hire longtime defensive coach Matt Patricia, which was almost universally criticized in league circles. The offense was poorly constructed with a patchwork and mostly sub-par skill players. Executives from opposing teams were also turned off by Belichick's public estrangement of Jones.

These issues led decision makers to wonder whether Belichick could build an offense without Brady or have enough patience to develop a young quarterback.

The power structure was another red flag. Belichick has been fiercely loyal to his coaching confidantes and like-minded personnel managers throughout his career, and those bonds can be traced to the Patriots' deteriorating performance in recent seasons — again most notably bringing Patricia into the offense.

Sources with multiple teams that just hired new head coaches expressed varying degrees of relief that Belichick did not join their team. Some were concerned that Belichick would overhaul the leadership structure and chain of command.

Others, especially on the draft side, heard stories from Patriots scouts who didn't feel like their opinions had any weight with Belichick. His draft record has been heavily scrutinized over the past decade, with rumors swirling around the league that he overruled his personnel department on major draft decisions. The fear, especially among scouts who spend so much time on the road, away from their families, is that they might be wasting their time.

There has also been a change in the way players want to be coached. Many current players want to interact with their coaches as human beings, often feeling that they will be at their best seven days a week, and they prefer to feel empowered by the staff.

The latest wave of new-age coaches has no such authoritarian complex, demanding players do whatever they say simply because they are their boss. Players want to know why they do things, whether it's the weightlifting routine or a schematic technique, and coaches who can deliver their message in such a way have become more attractive.

While league executives agree that Belichick can still lead a defense in today's era — and the way the Patriots played still showed revolutionary ideas, they say — concerns about the offensive approach have trumped defensive coaching.

History has shown us that the eight hires in this cycle will not have a high success rate. As the saying goes in the business, there are only two types of coaches: those who have been fired and those who will be fired. Time could determine whether these teams will regret bypassing Belichick, whether he gets another chance on the sidelines to prove he can still do it, or whether he retires as those teams' favorite hires be replaced at short notice.

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However it turns out, there was a strong belief that Belichick would not be on most of their shortlists due to his performance over the past four years. They cited many of the same reasons why Kraft and the Patriots chose to replace Belichick with Jerod Mayo.

And that's why Belichick may have to wait at least a year before getting another chance to lead a franchise.

(Photo: Bryan M. Bennett/Getty Images)