Bill Belichick is getting ready to begin his career as the head coach of North Carolina. But that’s not where anyone expected the former New England Patriots coach to end up.
After Belichick and Patriots owner Robert Kraft mutually agreed to part ways at the end of the 2023 season, many believed the future Hall of Fame coach would land with another NFL job.
Belichick interviewed with several teams, including the Atlanta Falcons, but nothing came to pass. Instead, Belichick took a year off and visited several college programs, like Washington, where his son, Stephen Belichick, was the defensive coordinator.
A year later, Belichick is now getting ready to lead the Tar Heels in his first attempt at coaching at the collegiate level.
When asked in a recent interview with The Boston Globe what the biggest differences are between the NFL and college, Belichick had an interesting response.
“It’s a much more cohesive, and I’d say unified, view of what we’re trying to do and how we’re trying to do it,” Belichick told The Boston Globe’s Ben Volin this week, speaking about the differences between coaching in the NFL vs. college. “It’s a lot of football, and there’s not much in your way.
“There’s no owner, there’s no owner’s son,” he continued. “There’s no cap, everything that goes with the marketing and everything else, which I’m all for that. But it’s way less of what it was at that level.”
That obviously seems like a direct shot at Patriots owner Robert Kraft and his son Jonathan.
At this point, Belichick and Kraft just keep passive-aggressively throwing jabs at one another by ways of the media.
Kraft told former Patriots Julian Edelman and Rob Gronkowski last month that it was a “big risk” hiring Belichick when he did. Belichick responded that it was just as big a risk taking the Patriots job when he did.
"As I told Robert multiple times through the years, I took a big risk by taking the New England Patriots head coaching job," Belichick said. "I already had an opportunity to be the head coach of the New York Jets, but the ownership situation was unstable."
It is interesting, though, that Belichick didn’t end up back in the NFL and he may have, more or less, settled for a college job at arguably a lesser Power Four program known primarily for its men’s basketball team.
But maybe he was tired of owners and cap situations. Or maybe, they were tired of him.