NFL Open Thread: it’s the league that got small edition
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This imagined column from a writer juiced into BelichickWorld is very funny:
Belichick and his inner circle even created a 2,300-page document on how they would run a football organization. Originally titled Project 2025, it was renamed Project We Know More Than You to avoid confusion with a political document they also highly respected. Belichick planned to hand the document to potential employers and tell them it was The Bible: not one jot nor titter could be changed if they wanted his services. Unfortunately, all of my sources agree, the NFL just lacks both faith and vision these days.
“These teams are not professionally run,” one source said. “One of them has the owner’s son running the analytics department when not goofing off with his wrestling buddies!”
“Yeah, nepotism is gross,” said another source identified only as Little Stephen.
“I don’t recognize the NFL anymore,” said a third source. “It used to be: you rode the coattails of a defensive head coach to a nominal coordinator job; you parlayed that to a head coaching job, failed spectacularly and tail-tucked back to your mentor; he handed you a scouting director job and then an offensive coordinator role you had zero qualifications for; you failed spectacularly at that but parlayed every connection you had to get a consultant job with a Super Bowl team, then backstabbed their coordinator and tore the locker room in half; and then you just waltzed into another coordinator job like the drunk who caused the 20-car pileup.
The University of North Carolina eventually read Belichick’s visionary manifesto and outbid Villanova, Butler and Gonzaga for the right to genuflect before football royalty. As for Belichick, he saw something at Chapel Hill that he no longer saw in the NFL or at college football programs people actually pay attention to: an opportunity, not just to work again and give his loyalists no-questions-asked sinecures but … actually, that’s it. That’s the sum total of the UNC job’s appeal.
Presumably, Tanier was responding largely to this, and…Jesus, it’s barely even a parody:
It was because, in the words of a confidant, Belichick is “disgusted” in what he believes the NFL had become.
“This is a big f— you to the NFL,” another Belichick confidant says.
Sure. And me going stag to the prom was a big “fuck you” to Winona Ryder.
Look, Belichick is a genuinely great coach who has earned most of his arrogance, and anybody who wants to deny Belichick his share of the credit for the Pats dynasty (which was bookended by Super Bowls they won 20-17 and 13-3 against two of the greatest offenses in NFL history) is a maroon. But time waits for no one, and while he remained an excellent defensive coach to the end it’s it’s pretty clear that Belichick was no longer capable of excelling in a total-control model at the NFL level. If he had been willing to make if very clear that he was willing to let someone else be in charge of personnel and would look beyond his increasingly third-rate cronies when hiring assistants he could probably have worked in the NFL again, but he wasn’t so he won’t.
And hey. it’s his life — if he’d rather take his podcast to Chapel Hill and retain the level of control to which he’s become accustomed, that may be the best thing for him. It’s not like there’s much more he can prove in the NFL, and if he broke Shula’s record he’d just be keeping it warm for Andy Reid anyway. But for reporters to credulously run with the idea that this is some kind of revenge play on the NFL is pretty funny.