A decade and a half ago in a rare press conference appearance at the annual NFL Scouting Combine in Indianapolis, Bill Belichick spent a chunk of his opening statement to the media lamenting the fact that a number of coaching contemporaries, most notably Mike Shanahan, no longer had jobs.
“But that’s the National Football League,” Belichick concluded in borderline disbelief in February of 2009.
Well, 15 years later the reality of “the National Football League” has caught up to the 71-year-old Belichick, who appears to be headed toward his first season of unemployment since he entered the league as a special assistant on Ted Marchibroda’s Baltimore Colts staff in 1975.
While Belichick reportedly had multiple interviews for the open head coaching job with the Falcons in recent weeks, Atlanta announced that it has hired budding youthful retread Raheem Morris for the job.
Weeks after Belichick and the Patriots “mutually agreed to part ways amicably” it appears the six-time Super Bowl-winning head coach will not find work in 2024, despite his obvious desires to do so. All the openings across the league have been filled except for Washington and Seattle, and neither seems to have any interest in arguably the GOAT coach.
“I don’t know what the right word is, it just doesn’t seem right to not have people like Mike Shanahan…not be head coaches in the National Football League,” Belichick offered in 2009, after the two-time Super Bowl-winning head coach had been let go by the Broncos. “Mike Shanahan is certainly a Hall of Fame coach. It’s just hard to believe that coaches like Mike Shanahan and Jon Gruden aren’t coaching in the National Football League.”
Many feel the same way today about Belichick, the man who’s just 15 victories shy of breaking Don Shula’s all-time NFL wins record. The man who built the Patriots dynasty in New England. The man who’s been the most stable and consistent sideline winner in football over the last quarter century, heck of any time period.
But that man, as his GOAT QB partner in championship crime used to say, is closer to the end of his career than the beginning. In fact, he’s close to the expiration date for NFL coaches, his pal and former assistant Romeo Crennel the oldest head coach in history with his 73-year-old interim tenure with the Texans in 2021. Pete Carrol would have joined that exclusive 73-year-old NFL coaching club in 2024, but he was let go by the Seahawks earlier this month and, like Belichick, appears to be a pumped-and-jacked aging Super Bowl-winning coach who can’t find work.
Sure, it feels crazy to think that there is no place in the NFL for Belichick. Or even Carroll.
That guys like 37-year-old Jerod Mayo or 42-year-old Panthers hire Dave Canales are employed as supposedly better coaching options than future Hall of Famers.
But as one of those unemployed future Hall of Famers might say, it is what it is.
Football is a young man’s game, in many ways. On the field and on the sideline, now more than ever.
Belichick has been around more than long enough to know that, even if it truly didn’t hit home for him until now when he’s likely to spend the 2024 season at home, if not on a TV set near you.
Belichick may still be the best living football coach on the planet. He still clearly wants to be coaching an NFL team. And yet, it looks like that won’t happen.
Sure it feels kinda crazy.
“But that’s the National Football League.”
