A pre-holiday weekend Feinstein Friday saw John lament the end of the line for Nick Saban, Pete Carroll, and Bill Belichick, the latter of which is a hot name for our openings here in DC – but John thinks it’s time to head west, Old Man?
“Belichick looks like he wants to keep going; it was pretty obvious that Kraft fired him, and you know, maybe there was a conversation about Bill just coaching as opposed to being coach and GM, which is where the failures came,” Feinstein said. “I think he will coach again. There are plenty of open jobs, and the first one that comes to mind to me is San Diego, because they have a good young quarterback, and he likes warm weather and likes to play golf.”
It’s possible, in John’s mind, and would be ‘surprising but not shocking’ if a few more teams could be candidates to open jobs if they don’t get as far in the playoffs as hoped, and if Bill ends up somewhere, maybe we’ll see a different personality?
“His dad coached at Navy for 34 years and was retired when I was doing the ‘Civil War’ book, but he was always around and was around when I did the games on radio, and he has a completely opposite personality from his son,” Feinstein said. “Outgoing funny storyteller, loved to sit around in the morning with coffee and tell stories, so I got to know Steve pretty well and through that I got to know Bill a little bit; we would exchange occasional emails and I actually went to see him in his office because I wanted to do a book on Brady coming back after the knee injury, and I knew if Bill supported me, then Tom might go for it – and Bill just went, ‘Tom doesn't wanna do that, he wants to focus on his comeback and being healthy and playing well.’ And I understood, but I figured it was worth a try though since he was willing to take time to see me, so we've always got along – and I know there's a lot more sense of humor there than people see, because he just doesn't show it to people very often.”
So Bill may be somewhere, but is it disappointing to John that Josh Harris came out and said he's not interested in Belichick?
“No, because you guys asked me a couple of weeks ago if they should they go after Belichick and I said no, because you're starting from scratch and Bill's gonna be 72,” Feinstein said, reiterating he thinks trying to lure Mike Tomlin to DC would be his preference, so much so he’d trade the No. 2 pick to do it.
“I would, in part because there are several good quarterbacks in this draft but we don't know which one is the best,” Feinstein said. “Everybody says it's Caleb Williams, and maybe it is, but he'd go No. 1 anyway, so who knows beyond that?”
Regardless of the situation, while we didn’t know when Feinstein called in that Adam Peters would be hired as the GM hours later, John was very enthused that Harris’ search committee did include a successful NBA exec in Bob Myers.
“He's a basketball guy, but to me, coaching is coaching; if a guy has the right traits to be a great coach, he will be a great coach regardless of sport,” Feinstein said. “Bob Knight used to tell me all the time that he wished he'd been a football coach and thought he'd have been a better football coach than a basketball coach, but he also thought he should be commissioner of baseball, so who knows? But I don't think that's a bad move, because it’s not bad to have input from guys like that. It’s sort of the opposite of Dan Snyder, who never listened to anybody except for Vinny Cerrato.”