Possible landing spots for Bill Belichick: teams that might want to hire the famous Patriots head coach when the New England era ends
Let’s take a moment to think about how crazy this is. It’s amazing how quickly the New England Patriots as well as head coach Bill Belichick’s time with the team have fallen apart. Every star has to go down, and Belichick would never be a coach forever.
And even though they beat the Steelers within Week 14, the Patriots are currently 3-10 and in last place in the AFC East and the whole conference.
For Belichick, this is the worst start to a season (so far) with 15 games played. The Patriots never lost eight games to a season from 2001 to 2019 (the “Tom Brady era”).
Another report this week, this time from Tom Curran of NBC Sports Boston, says that Patriots owner Robert Kraft is currently deciding to move on from Belichick.
He made this decision after seeing his team lose to the Colts 10-6 in Frankfurt, Germany, on November 12.
That’s where we are now. The Patriots have lost 10 games and are getting ready to play the Chiefs on Sunday.
More troubling than the track record is the fact that players who were once seen as key to the rebuild have gone backwards. Quarterback Mac Jones has set career lows in every category.
We’ve also said before that Belichick’s choices about the team’s roster as the de facto general manager have hurt his performance on the field.
In the big picture, his message also fails to be getting through to anyone on the team. Most likely, you know what I mean: the New England Patriots.
They endure changed head coaches 24 years ago, as they fired Pete Carroll and hired Bill Belichick, who would go on to change the course of NFL history.
As coach of the Patriots, Belichick has won a record six Super Bowls, making him the most successful coach in the history of the pay cap.
Belichick had a 5-11 first season in New England. In Year 2, he went 11-5 and won the Super Bowl following Tom Brady took over at quarterback when Drew Bledsoe got hurt.
From 2001 to 2019, Brady’s last season in New England, the Patriots won an average of 12.2 games in the regular season and 30-11 in the playoffs, including 6-3 within Super Bowls.
Belichick, who is 71 years old, has been able to get it work since Brady left. The Patriots went 25–25 in their first three years without Brady. They only played one playoff game and lost by 30 points.
The Pats are 3-10 on the season after beating the Steelers on Thursday night. They are tied for second-highest in the NFL with the Panthers, who fired boss Frank Reich two weeks ago.
The Patriots have had their worst season in more than 20 years because of bad drafts, questionable hiring choices, and the inability to turn 2021 first-round choice Mac Jones to a franchise quarterback.
People in the NFL are becoming more and more sure that someone other than Belichick is going to be coaching the team in 2024, whether it’s team boss Robert Kraft’s decision to move on or Belichick’s decision to step down.
It would also take some skill to announce Belichick’s departure to the press. When the Dolphins fired Don Shula, the Yankees fired Joe Torre, as well as the Giants fired Tom Coughlin, I was covering those teams.
All of those times, the team failed to label the move a “firing.” The team couldn’t just “fire” any of those people because they had done too much and become too important to the team’s past.