Time for a little game of Connect the Dots with Grant Paulsen, whose kiddie meal placemat seems to be leading to Bill Belichick in DC next year?
We’ve heard the rumors, we’ve seen the odds, and we’ve watched the Patriots…but yes, apparently, G&D played a clip from the Pat McAfee Show where Dan Orlovsky said he’s heard, even as “not a reporter,” that Belichick will part ways with the Patriots this offseason and knows where his next destination is already – and within that, speculated Bill might be the GM there, too.
“Orlovsky is hedging publicly, saying he's heard that Belichick already knows the team where he's going, right?” Grant asked.
“That’s the major thing that he wouldn't coach the Patriots – I don't wanna say it's assumed that a lot of people are feeling that that might be the case, as disastrous as it's been over the last several years, right?” Danny replied. “Not really the coaching job more so than him as a personnel person, which has been disastrous; their drafts have been awful, their free agent moves have had probably been worse, and they are among the worst rosters in the league and he's directly in charge of that, so there’s no check to that balance anymore.”
So yeah, the Pats’ situation is Bill’s fault, so it’s not unexpected there could be a clean break – but the fact that he already knows his next destination?
“The part that’s an escalation is not that it’s happening – major news in of itself, one of the great coaches ever, period, full stop – but it's already done and arranged, and he knows and once it happens, you’ll be surprised kind of a deal.”
“Here's why I'm fascinated by this: if this is true, a team has actually been in touch with and is talking with Bill Belichick, it means that either there's a head coaching opening – and there’s only one job like that, where the Raiders fired Josh McDaniels – or it's a team that already knows they're firing their head coach, right?” Grant asked. “How could you possibly say you're bringing in Bill Belichick unless you already know you're firing your head coach, and how many teams in the NFL are there that already know they're firing their head coach?”
One of those might be Washington, with new ownership and everything Ron Rivera hasn’t been, but Grant still doesn’t think there’s many markets like that.
“The Raiders have an opening, Antonio Pierce is their interim head coach right now, and the Cardinals, a lot of people thought this would be a one and done year for Jonathan Gannon and they'd be in the market as of right now,” GP said. “I don't think it's a safe bet that he gets fired, the staff I think has done a pretty good job, even if the record doesn’t say that.”
That prompted Grant to make two columns for Belichick’s landing spot: probably open and possibly open, and they went through the teams…and outside of Matt Eberflus, because “the Bears are in the same boat as Washington,” there really wasn’t a large list in former column.
Not hard to connect those dots, in GP’s mind.
“If in fact it's true, if you believe Dan Orlovsky, there’s really only three teams that are almost certainly gonna have different head coaches next season, and Washington's one of them,” Grant said. “I guess it’s possible that it could be another team that already knows something we don't, which is, it doesn't look on the surface like they've got to move on from a guy, but they want Belichick that badly, or there's some relationships in the building where there could be a weird trade – Mike Vrabel from Tennessee would blow everyone’s mind – but you understand why I'm so interested in this.”
The Raiders know they need a coach, and the Bears and Washington are likely looking, and Orlovsky says Belichick knows…and it was just weeks ago that Mike Florio mentioned the Commanders could try to trade for Belichick.
“The guy gets a lot of information, so this isn’t crazy, and now Orlovsky is saying this,” Grant said. “Am I crazy?”
“Nope,” Danny replied. “If you start doing process of elimination, there are probably 20 teams that probably wouldn't be in the marketplace, but if you really want to make a splash, there are a couple of cities and a couple of teams where that would make a lot of practical sense…and this is one of them.”
Great, but here’s the problem:
“I just need it on the record that I don't think it would be a disaster if Belichick came in here just as a coach and they had a GM, but I want nothing to do with this,” Grant said. “I would like to go hire a 38-year-old offensive coordinator, and Bill Belichick, a very aged and experienced defensive coordinator, albeit one of the greatest of all time, is the opposite of the direction I would like this young group to go in.”