At some point today, Bill Belichick will be blowing out 73 candles. Or maybe one big 7 and one big 3. And not in the order they would have been 36 years ago.
Regardless, the long-time Patriots coach and current North Carolina coach has finished another cycle around the sun.
The 2025 season will be his second out of the NFL. And while he and his consigliere like to thumb their noses at the NFL, it’s widely believed that’s where Bill wants to be. Because it’s also believed he desperately wants to catch Don Shula for the all-time wins record.
Shula has 328 regular-season wins and 347 total wins, including postseason. Belichick is at 302 and 333. (Bears legend George Halas has 318 and 324.)
Belichick also needs to fend off Andy Reid, who at 273 and 301 is not that far away from leapfrogging the GOAT. While Reid still needs three more Super Bowl wins to catch Belichick in that category, Shula won only two.
Total wins are total wins, and Reid will be piling up more of them this year in Kansas City, while Belichick is not.
The overriding question is whether Belichick will ever get another shot in the NFL. He got one interview in 2024 (with the Falcons, whom he and his girlfriend now like to troll) and none in 2025. His buyout plunges to $1 million on June 1. If anyone wants him for 2026, he’ll be available at a relative low cost.
If the Tar Heels tear up the ACC, it’ll help. Although Belichick apparently will keep making media appearances, his attempted pivot to relatability in 2024 didn’t move the needle where it mattered. At all.
Frankly, there’s a good chance he’s done. With each passing year, it’s going to be harder and harder for him to catch and pass Shula. It also will be harder and harder for him to keep Reid from catching him.
Maybe Bill Belichick should have taken a job with a private university.
By becoming the head coach at North Carolina, Belichick accepted a position that would make all of his official communications public records. That’s how we got confirmation the powers-that-be in Chapel Hill were nervous about Belichick quickly bolting for pro ball. It’s also how everyone learned Belichick issued the instruction to copy his girlfriend, Jordon Hudson, on emails sent to him.
Even though Hudson doesn’t work for the school or the program, her emails to and from school accounts are fair game. In response to a properly-submitted request, these public documents must be produced to the media.
Matt Baker of TheAthletic.com has obtained emails sent and received by Hudson. From his article regarding the contents of the emails, three things stand out.
First, her email signature identifies her as the chief operating officer of Belichick Productions. (Baker found no business registered in that name.) This title helps explain her role in, for example, negotiating with NFL Films over the on-until-it-wasn’t Hard Knocks project. And it sheds more light on what she was doing during the spring practice finale over the weekend.
Second, she (and Belichick) are very sensitive about criticism of Belichick on the UNC football page.
“Is there anyone monitoring the UNC Football page for slanderous commentary and subsequently deleting it/blocking users that are harassing BB in the comments?” she asked on February 13. The next day, Belichick wrote this: “I cannot believe that UNC would support my being called a ‘predator.’” (Looks like the Chapel Hill honeymoon ended in roughly two months.)
Third, she asked the school’s media team to display greater sensitivity to the inherent nepotism associated with Belichick’s decision to hire his own son, Steve, to work as the school’s defensive coordinator.
“Though Steve Belichick is in fact Bill’s son, he should be depicted and represented as his own established, credible entity as opposed to an extension of Bill,” Hudson wrote on December 22. “It can be easily misinterpreted that Steve is simply benefitting from nepotism but that is not the case. Steve was fortunate to have learned defensive football strategy from the ‘greatest defensive mind’ of all-time. He has earned his position due to his performance and output. . . .
“It is really worth emphasizing the point that Steve has the experience of being a COLLEGE defensive coordinator and will bring a plethora of knowledge to the coaching staff. I believe being strategic about the depiction of the Steve (sic) will prevent controversy and show upmost (sic) respect towards Steve’s career, validate Bill’s decision as a HC to hire Steve.”
It’s hard not to think Hudson was, in defending Steve against the perception/reality of nepotism, referring indirectly to her own rise in the program for which she doesn’t actually work. She’s only there because of her connection to Bill.
Really, that’s the best response to any claims of nepotism, wherever it happens. In plenty of industries (and especially sports), it’s either nepotism OR cronyism that opens doors. Most jobs in a place where the number of interested applicants far exceeds the number of positions go to people who have some sort of connection, to someone. A common educational background. An old friend. A good friend of a family member. However it goes, that’s how it works.
Managers are always looking for people they can trust. Family can be trusted. Friends can be trusted. The devil you know is always better than the devil you don’t.
In Steve Belichick’s case, his relationship to his father made him the primary candidate to be hired as the defensive coordinator. And Hudson’s relationship to Bill Belichick has positioned her to work there, without really working there.
That might fly at North Carolina (even if the school didn’t realize it would be getting a volunteer who would have significant influence when Bill was hired). It’s another very real factor that could complicate his return to the NFL, because it’s hard to imagine the payrolled employees of NFL teams taking orders from someone who doesn’t even work there.
Former Tennessee quarterback Nico Iamaleava is looking for a new program. One possible destination can be crossed off the list.
Via Pete Nakos of On3.com, Bill Belichick’s North Carolina Tar Heels are out of the Iamaleava pursuit.
Iamaleava recently de-Volunteered from Tennessee after failing to get a bump in his NIL payment to $4 million for 2025. He has also been linked to UCLA and Tulane.
The Tar Heels, per Nakos, are regarded as the favorites to land South Alabama quarterback Gio Lopez.
The next transfer portal officially opens on Wednesday.
Yes, we’ve seen the video of Bill Belichick’s girlfriend taking a prominent role at North Carolina’s spring-practice finale. (So, please, stop sending it.) It’s becoming fodder for the usual outrage and counter-outrage machine.
We’ll provide a different take on the situation. She was just doing her job.
Watch it carefully. She’s ensuring that his microphone is working. It’s part of her role as assistant producer or coordinator producer or executive producer of the documentary/infomercial that was set for NFL Films until it wasn’t. (They’re still making it, with some other company due to produce and distribute it.)
Whether she should have the position of assistant producer or coordinator producer or executive producer is a different issue — as is the question of whether she should be copied on Belichick’s work emails. Regardless, the Saturday video isn’t some new development; it’s proof of the fact that she is and will be very involved in the UNC program.
It’s unclear who’s paying her. If it were the school, there would be a public record of it. If it’s Belichick directly or the company that’s making the UNC documentary/infomercial, there will be no paper trail.
Regardless, she’s involved. Saturday’s video is just the latest public confirmation of it.
Bill Belichick has a book coming out next month. Some have received advanced copies for review purposes.
Not surprisingly, we have not.
So we’ll have to defer to the opinions of those who have gotten an early copy. A review of The Art of Winning (a title which may or may not have been an homage to one of his penpals) from Ben Volin of the Boston Globe creates the impression that the book is far less a tell-all and far more a textbook.
There’s no mention of the still-mysterious benching cornerback Malcolm Butler, who went from de facto Super Bowl MVP to, three years later in the championship game, MIA. Volin adds that neither Robert Kraft nor Aaron Hernandez are mentioned.
While Volin calls the book “an enjoyable, breezy read,” he adds that some of the coaching principles Belichick articulates are “a little clichéd or well-worn.”
Belichick admits to mistakes, including not drafting quarterback Lamar Jackson in 2018. (Belichick took running back Sony Michel one spot before the Ravens traded back into the first round for Jackson, at pick No. 32.) Belichick also attributes letting Tom Brady leave in free agency to financial considerations, which sharply conflicts with the notion that, after 20 years, Brady had simply had enough of Belichick.
The NFL seemingly has had enough of Belichick. Plenty of NFL fans have not; they’ll surely give him $35 in droves for copies of a 289-page book that sounds like it would have been a lot better if he’d leaned fully and completely into the interesting things he’s experienced in nearly 50 years of coaching football at the highest level.
Maybe that book will come, if/when Belichick realizes that he won’t be coaching in the NFL again. For now, it makes sense for Belichick to burn no bridges.
No more than he already has, that is.
North Carolina will pay coach Bill Belichick $10 million this year. The school will pay the rest of his staff nearly $12.5 million.
247sports.com, via Sports Business Journal, has the details.
The figure for assistant coaches, front-office department, strength and conditioning coaches, and other support staffers comes in $3.8 million under the $16.3 million budget made available to Belichick under his contract.
Steve Belichick, the team’s defensive coordinator and Bill’s son, will make $1.3 million. Offensive coordinator (and former Browns coach) Freddie Kitchens, is earning $1.15 million. G.M. Mike Lombardi will earn $1.5 million.
The number that continues to hover over Belichick’s new tenure in college football is this: $1 million. That’s his buyout, as of June 1, 2025.
Before he signed, North Carolina muckety-mucks were “closely monitoring” the news for any indication that he might be leaving for the NFL. First, an NFL team has to want to hire him. The better the Tar Heels do under Belichick, the more likely he’ll be to get another NFL chance.
And the more closely the powers-that-be will be watching for any sign that Belichick will bolt.
If you missed it the first time, they’ve performed an encore. Sort of.
On the weekend of the Super Bowl, Bill Belichick’s girlfriend was walking around New Orleans in a T-shirt that trolled the Falcons for their loss to the Patriots in Super Bowl LI. The game included the Falcons blowing a 28-3 halftime lead.
Those wacky kids are at it again. She has posted an image on Instagram apparently from that day in February on the 28th day of March. As in 3-28. As in 28-3.
The move operates on another level, given that the Falcons interviewed — but didn’t hire — Belichick to be the team’s head coach in 2024.
It’s just another concrete example of how the one-time football curmudgeon has made a late-life pivot toward being the kind of guy the old Bill would have openly mocked and ridiculed.
For North Carolina, it’s all about recruiting. And, apparently, coach Bill Belichick didn’t see any recruiting benefit in attending the school’s annual Pro Day workout on Monday.
Via Joseph Person of TheAthletic.com, Belichick was a no-show at the event. Even though “former UNC greats, NFL agents, media members and scouts from 31 of the league’s 32 teams” were present.
Belichick apparently was leading staff meetings from 7:00 a.m. ET until noon. And those meetings apparently couldn’t be rescheduled to allow Belichick to make an appearance.
The scouts weren’t surprised by Belichick’s decision not to show up as former coach Mack Brown’s players attempted to kick start NFL careers. None of those players are Belichick’s guys.
“I think Bill’s just letting Mack’s guys be Mack’s guys, then he wants his guys to be his guys,” Charlotte-based scout Josh Washburn. “None of us really expected to see Bill or [G.M./Consigliere Mike] Lombardi.”
It’ll be different next year. If Belichick is still there. Many believe Belichick still wants a viable path back to the NFL. Few currently believe he’ll have one.
Tom Brady says that in his final years in New England, he began to realize that he and coach Bill Belichick were not on the same page.
In a reflection on NFL free agency that he posted to his website, Brady talked about the only time he was a free agent: When he left New England for Tampa Bay five years ago. Brady says that in the final years of his final contract with the Patriots, he knew something had to change.
“For me, it was a creeping decision that lived passively in the back of mind for 2-3 years until March of 2020 when a whirlwind of a few days made me realize that a decision was coming sooner rather than later,” Brady wrote. “The reality was, after twenty years together, a natural tension had developed between where Coach Belichick and I were headed in our careers, and where the Patriots were moving as a franchise. It was the kind of tension that could only be resolved by some kind of split or one of us reassessing our priorities.”
Brady says that as he weighed leaving the Patriots, he listed his most important priorities and came to the conclusion that the Buccaneers were a better fit for him.
“What I ended up with was a list of about twenty things that I then ranked and graded on a weighted scale from 1 to 3,” Brady wrote. “The presence of skill players was a 3 in terms of importance, for example, and the Bucs graded out as a 3 because of guys like Mike Evans and Chris Godwin The same was true for the head coach. That was a 3 in importance, and Tampa scored a 3 with Bruce Arians. Game day weather was a 2, practice weather was a 3. Financial compensation was on the list, obviously, but it wasn’t first, it probably wasn’t even top 10, and it definitely didn’t rank as a 3 in importance. In the end, I chose Tampa, almost exactly five years ago now, because, in the aggregate, it graded out higher than New England along those twenty or so dimensions.”
The split with Belichick and the Patriots worked out well for Brady, who won the Super Bowl in his first year in Tampa Bay.
It’s spring football season at North Carolina. And, apparently, it’s revisionist history season, too.
North Carolina G.M./Consigliere Mike Lombardi, appearing this week with Pat McAfee and his crew, painted an interesting picture about the talks with NFL Films regarding the possibility of Hard Knocks featuring UNC and new coach Bill Belichick.
Quick refresher: On February 28, Ryan Glasspiegel of FrontOfficeSports.com reported that the offseason edition of Hard Knocks will (not might or could, but will) feature North Carolina. That same day, Jonathan Jones of CBSSports.com reported that the deal was done, but for the signing of the paperwork.
The way “Lombo” now tells it, there never could have been an agreement with NFL Films, because North Carolina wanted a show that would cover the offseason AND the preseason AND the entire 2025 football season.
Here’s what Lombardi told McAfee on March 19: “The problem was that, you know, we control the story we need to tell here. And the story we wanna tell doesn’t end after we play TCU [on Labor Day weekend]. The story that we wanna tell is a story about how we’re rebuilding this program. How we’re gonna honor the great players who have come before us. How we’re going to restore Tar Heel football and make this stadium come alive on Saturday afternoons, like a lot of other schools in the ACC. That’s the story we wanna tell.
“And when it stops after the first game, like Hard Knocks does, it doesn’t do us any good to tell that story. And that really was the concern that we all had here in the building was we’re storytellers. When you let them in your building, we’re gonna tell a story. And the story we wanna tell was about how we’re working to build this program, and we’re gonna work hard to recruit and do all that. And that extends into September, October, and November. It can’t stop at Labor Day. And I think that was more the issue. . . .”
If that was the concern, why were they even talking to NFL Films? The league surely wouldn’t have given all three editions of the 2026 Hard Knocks universe to North Carolina. And that’s CLEARLY what Lombardi now says Belichick and North Carolina wanted.
If that’s even remotely true — and Lombardi made his assertion literally minutes after declaring it’s “lying season” in the NFL and “everybody lies” — there would have been no reason to even talk to NFL Films about the offseason version of Hard Knocks.
Logic and common sense point to other reasons. As we reported, multiple owners were unhappy about the news that NFL Films was giving North Carolina and Bill Belichick the platform to promote his new program. There reportedly were “creative control” issues. There’s also been plenty of talk that someone close enough to Belichick to be cc’d on his emails expected to be a little too involved in the process of producing the show.
In contrast, there has been NO reporting that the talks collapsed because North Carolina demanded offseason Hard Knocks AND preseason Hard Knocks AND in-season Hard Knocks.
But Lombardi’s latest story is UNC wanted it all, and he’s sticking to it. Regarding any other potential explanation for the turn of events, it’s far easier to attack the messenger(s) than it is to address the merits. Said Lombardi this week, “Obviously, there was a lot of misinformation, mostly from somebody who runs a website as we all know and who’s never gotten it right. But that’s OK. He keeps writing it, and we’ll continue to not listen to what he says ‘cause he has no sources, and life goes on.” (You’ve got to admit, I’ve done pretty well for a guy who has never gotten it right and who has no sources. Probably because, at least once in a while, we do get it right and we do have sources. For example, we were right about folks at UNC being nervous about Belichick looking to make a quick exit to the NFL.)
With Lombardi, it’s all about the messaging. Truth is irrelevant. It’s no different than the current state of American politics. Push your message aggressively. Attack anyone who dares to share any information that conflicts with your message.
Consider how Lombo further explained the goal of a North Carolina “documentary.” He flat-out admitted it will be an infomercial aimed at attracting players, raising money, and generally advancing the interests of the Tar Heels program.
“It’s really about what story do we wanna tell, right?” Lombardi said. “And we wanted to tell a full story of our year. And we still are in talks about telling that story. And eventually we’ll sign a contract that has that story involved. But that’s what we need to tell. Because, remember, we’re recruiting. Every day.
“You know, Al Davis used to tell me this all the time, Pat. He said, ‘You know, when you talk — and of course he said you shouldn’t talk very much — but when you do talk, you have three people you’re talking to. You’re talking to the owner, you’re talking to the team, and you’re talking to the fans. And when we talk here at North Carolina, we’re recruiting. We’re recruiting to our fan base. We’re recruiting young prospective players. And we’re recruiting to our alumni. And so those are the three things we have to center on, every single day.”
Give Lombardi credit. He’s focused on the message, to a fault. And the fault is that he’s making it clear everything he says is aimed solely at helping the program, regardless of whether it’s accurate. Which ultimately explains why he’s now claiming North Carolina wants an infomercial that covers the entire season. It’s the best way to couch the collapse of the talks with NFL Films, given that his overall goal is to at all times make North Carolina football look good.
Which makes it entirely possible that Lombardi’s messaging on any North Carolina-related topic (or pretty much any other subject) can best be summarized by the opening statement once delivered in fewer than 10 words by noted legal scholar Vincent LaGuardia Gambini.
It doesn’t matter whether his words have little or no relationship to reality. All that matters is the messaging. Common sense takes a back seat. If it even gets a spot in the car.
Even if common sense, in this specific instance, makes it crystal clear that, if the impasse came from NFL Films offering the offseason edition of Hard Knocks and North Carolina wanting all of it for 2025, we would have heard about it weeks ago.
