The New York Giants have a head coach opening, but their former defensive coordinator Bill Belichick says he’s not interested. Belichick coordinated the defense en route to one of his Super Bowl titles before getting to turn the New England Patriots into a dynasty, so returning as his final swan song would be poetic and fitting. However, the UNC football coach says he’s not interested.
Bill Belichick is supposedly not eyeing the New York Giants opening
Given how good Bill Belichick was in the NFL and how bad he’s been in the college world, it is not at all shocking that he’s being mentioned for head coaching vacancies. Any other four-win college coach probably would not get much consideration from the NFL, but Belichick isn’t any other coach. He was asked about whether or not he’d want to go back to the NFL and coach the Giants now that Brian Daboll is out, but he declined.
“I’ve been asked about it from time to time,” Belichick told reporters. “Look I’ve been down this road before. I’m focused on Wake Forest, that’s it. That’s my commitment to this team. This week it’s Wake Forest, next week it’s that opponent and so forth. I’m here to do the best for this team.”
Of course, that’s what any coach would say. There is still plenty of season left for Belichick, and he doesn’t want anyone, especially his players, think he’s coaching with one foot out the door. He might be, but he’d never admit that. Time will tell if he’s truly not interested or if he was just utilizing coach speak. He was given a massive contract to turn UNC around, something that is clearly going to take a lot of time, but things can change. He has a buyout clause and could easily be back in the NFL as soon as next season if he wants.
It would not at all be a surprise if Belichick was up for plenty of the NFL jobs next season despite his recent comments. His UNC tenure has largely been a disaster. The team has played much better of late, but that has a little bit to do with weaker opponents. The Tar Heels have routinely not looked like even a college-level team this year.
That is true of the whole team, but it’s worse for the defense. They have one of the best defensive minds in history coaching them, and they’re still giving up boatloads of points to bad offenses. That is perhaps the biggest indictment.
It got so bad that reports started swirling that UNC was already considering his buyout. He looks like he will survive the season, but his future is not certain beyond that. So if the NFL comes calling, it would be hard for Belichick to ignore it. He wanted to coach in the NFL after being fired by the New England Patriots, but nothing transpired, so he turned to college. That has been a disaster, and he might get fired there, too. If he does (and even if he doesn’t), then returning to the NFL, or at least attempting to, would make a lot of sense. He is old and could retire, but he could’ve done that before running a college program into the ground. It seems like he’s intent on proving he can do something without Tom Brady, so another shot at the NFL, where his talent clearly lies most, would be totally unsurprising. The college game really resembles the NFL one thanks to NIL and the transfer portal, but Belichick hasn’t really been that good at talent evaluation in years, so he’d probably still be better as a coach (not a GM/coach hybrid like he was in New England) at the NFL level than anything else.
