As Belichick Charms the Pants Off His New Fanbase, We Learn "This is a Big 'Fuck You' to the NFL"
We're just shy of 25 years since the last time Bill Belichick had to introduce himself on the first day at a new job. That one kicked off with his first of about 20 billion quotable one liners when he did a call back to his last press conference with the Jets. "Thank you," he began. "Hopefully this press conference will go a little better than the last one I had."
Well if I'm a North Carolina Tar Heels football fan right now - and I am - I have to appreciate that the years have been good to my new coach. Even a quarter century later, he's lost zero inches off his fastball.
Keeping it Heel - Here are some of the best quotes from Belichick during his introductory press conference:
On wanting to coach in college football
"I've always wanted to coach in college football, and it just never really worked out. I had some good years in the NFL, so that was OK. But this is really a dream come true."
On why he wants to continue coaching at his age
"My dad taught me that when you love what you do, it isn't working. I love what I do. I love coaching." …
His stance on developing younger players
"Tom Brady was a 4th string QB his rookie year … [Rob] Gronkowski didn't do too much his rookie year … [Julian] Edelman played QB in college … developing players is something we believe strongly in"
It goes on, but you get the picture. Suddenly the 12th place program in the ACC, 6-6 overall on the season and headed to the prestigious Wasabi Fenway against powerhouse UConn, have a new coach. And for once he's not some NFL assistant or some funny namer like Dick Crum, Carl Torbush or Larry Fedora. He's a transformative figure. Nothing less than the greatest football mind of all time. Someone who has not only pulled off more championships and more playoff wins than any other NFL coach. But the architect of some of the greatest game plans the world has ever seen. If he can derail the K-Gun, the Greatest Show on Turf, Peyton Manning's Colts, the 2016 Falcons and the 2018 Rams, how much of an unsolvable mystery will NC State present?
So that's all well and good. A basketball school getting its football program on the national map with the stroke of a pen. Terrific. More power to us UNC fans, new and old.
But what really matters, and what should be striking fear into the hearts of all FBS schools, is what people close to Belichick are saying about what's driving him right now:
Source - Belichick's feelings toward the NFL have shifted he has told confidants. Look at the past year. Robert Kraft, whose life and legacy was forever altered by Belichick, fired him in January. Only one out of seven teams with openings showed interested in hiring him. The Falcons interviewed him twice, but when it came time for the team's brass to rank choices, Belichick failed to land in anyone's top three candidates -- in part, ESPN later reported, because Kraft helped torpedo his chances. Weeks later in February, "The Dynasty," the Kraft-owned Patriots documentary, launched on Apple and minimized Belichick's role in the team's historic run so roundly that former Patriots players spoke out against it. Belichick was entertaining in his myriad media roles, but the league seemed to move on without him. Owners spoke of him respectfully, but not desirably. …
When he agreed to terms with North Carolina, it was not only because of a new challenge. …
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.
Let's address a few things. First, the fact that this reporting is being done by Seth Wickersham, who might as well have "anti-Belichick jihadist " in his X bio. Now he's suddenly trying to pivot toward his side in a way we haven't seen since the final episode of that trash The Dynasty series. We can have a rational discussion about how much editorial control the Krafts had over that series, but I'm told it was not much at all. They provided footage from Kraft Productions and so on. But the decision to make Belichick look like the spokesman for a company caught dumping toxic chemicals into an elementary school playground was entirely done by a documentary company that thrives on controversy. But the suggestion that Mr. Kraft told his fellow owners not to hire Belichick is not only a lie, it's a disprovable lie. Because he had 25 million reasons to hope somebody else hired his former employee he's been paying all year. No one has that much of a grudge.
But that's me burying the lede. The money shot is friends of Belichick's letting us he's disgusted by the NFL and this is his Fuck You to the whole operation. This is welcome news for us all, Belichick fans and Tar Heels fans alike. That entire megacorporation moved heaven and earth to try and stop him from succeeding, and failed. For all they took from him, he just kept winning. And yet still he was willing to put up with their horseshit. But they all turned their backs on him anyway. The empty suits who run these teams, most of whom have never broken down a game film, and others who don't know if a football is stuffed or puffed, cast him out into the cold just to protect their own little fiefdoms. And he's seething with resentment.
They made him angry. And they're not going to like him when he's angry:
It's often said that the best revenge is a life well lived. I believe the best revenge is a life well lived while being way more successful than the people who did you dirty, proving them wrong and humiliating them. And the fact Belichick took this job in part to flip the double State Bird of Massachusetts at the NFL and give them a Fuck You, will make his triumphs all the more satisfying.