(Photo: Today.com)
After 24 seasons, Bill Belichick and the New England Patriots decided to mutually part ways after a down year in Foxborough. I remember the timing of when this all happened in January with Nick Saban announcing he was retiring first after dominating the college game in Tuscaloosa with the Alabama Crimson Tide, the next day, it was announced Bill was leaving the Patriots, and the day after Bill, Pete Carroll announced he was leaving the Seattle Seahawks, but staying with the organization in some capacity. This season, Bill has become an analyst, a very good one at that, and has been as detailed as you’d expect him to be. We all know where his heart is and that’s with coaching. There was a part of me that predicted he’d be back on the sidelines as an NFL Head Coach. Now, you’ve heard the reports about him interviewing with the North Carolina Tar Heels after the team decided to fire the College Football Hall of Famer, Mack Brown. Bill will be coaching next year, but this time at the college level! He’s been hired as the next Head Coach of North Carolina.
Football and Coach Belichick are meant to be together. I’ve always had an immense respect for him and what he accomplished with the New England Patriots in his Hall of Fame esqe career. We can talk about what he didn’t do after Tom Brady left the Patriots for Tampa Bay, but as I said back in January when the news broke of him leaving New England, many of you were cheering on the Patriots when your team was already eliminated by January. The one thing that’s always stood out to me with Bill is how he believes in the players many passed up on meaning he takes the underdogs under his wing and helps them prove the teams that passed up on them into something. He did that with so many players during his tenure in Foxborough such as Julian Edelman, Rodney Harrison, and Danny Amendola, and look what he was able to accomplish with Tom for two decades, that speaks for itself. Bill is a disciplinarian and has no problem addressing a player when they do wrong right then and there. He has always built his teams to his preference. If they were a team with no possession receivers, he would either lean heavily to the running game or the short and intermediate passing attack. Bill is also known as the coach who will eliminate your best player and dare you to beat his team with another weapon. I can’t tell you how many times I saw him double the best Wide Receiver on the opposing team to frustrate them.
I’m glad to know he’ll be back on the sidelines coaching. He’s so passionate about the sport and teaching players the ins and outs of the game of football. I think he will do well in this new chapter in Chapel Hill. These younger players sometimes need an older coach with an old-school mentality to show them things they hadn’t seen before and he’s that disciplinarian as I mentioned above. The only thing I want to see is how he will adapt to the game as things change within the sport over the years.
