Remember when Bill Belichick was looking for a head-coaching job in January and some in the media were insisting he doesn’t need to control everything? That he could work and play well with others, even if he thinks those others know less about football than his dog does?
Now, as Belichick closes in on potentially taking the head-coaching job at the University of North Carolina, some in the media are saying he wants to run a program without interference. Which means he does want control.
The problem at the NFL level (beyond the fact that no one is calling him) is that bad teams are bad for a reason. A Belichick crony recently took a not-so-veiled shot, for example, at Tony Khan, the son of Jaguars owner Shad Khan, for running the team’s analytics department.
Such messages, which astute owners know trace directly back to Belichick, won’t make him more attractive to NFL teams. And so the whole thing creates momentum that will turn UNC into a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Throw in the fact that he might be trying to set up his son, Steve, to be the successor, and UNC holds much more appeal for Belichick than NFL. Especially if even the dumbest of NFL owners are smart enough to know that, if/when Belichick shows up, he’ll try to take the place over — whether his contract entitles him to or not.
