Throughout Bill Belichick’s 24-year tenure with the Patriots, his right-hand man was Berj Najarian. But when Belichick landed in Chapel Hill one year ago, Najarian already had another job.
Now, Najarian is available. Via Kevin Stone of New England Football Journal, Najarian is leaving Boston College. (The report was confirmed by Karen Guregian of MassLive.com.)
Najarian served as coach Bill O’Brien’s chief of staff, taking the job after the Patriots fired Belichick in January 2024. Now that Najarian will be a free agent, the next question is whether he’ll officially re-partner with Belichick at North Carolina.
Unofficially, there’s been an apparently ongoing connection to Belichick. An April 2025 email from Belichick regarding publicity for his book (which Jordon Hudson for some reason posted on social media), showed “Berj” as a recipient. Which raised an interesting question regarding whether and to what extent Najarian (unless Belichick would be sending the email to some other “Berj”) was collaborating with the head coach of a conference rival to his current employer.
If/when Belichick brings Berj to North Carolina, there will be a fairly sizable elephant in the room. As reported by Pablo Torre, Najarian was one of multiple key Patriots employees who complained about Mike Lombardi during his stint with the Patriots, resulting in Lombardi being ousted (he has claimed he left to write a book of his own).
Lombardi is now the G.M. of the UNC program. Lombardi’s presence could potentially make Najarian unwilling to work with Belichick again. Which could, in theory, force Belichick to choose between Najarian and Lombardi.
It’s not some minor point. Najarian was, by all appearances, the most trusted member of Belichick’s staff in New England. Everything went through Berj.
Here’s how ESPN.com characterized Najarian’s job duties, in 2011 (as found by Guregian): “Point-person for day-to-day operations of the team and acts as liaison across football and non-football departments. Najarian manages several elements of head coach Bill Belichick’s off-field agenda, including football and stadium operations, player and staff communication, scheduling and personal requests. In addition, Najarian manages various special projects in coaching and player personnel.”
That could create a separate complication, as it relates to Hudson. Belichick’s girlfriend seemingly has morphed into much of the Berj role. She may not want Berj around. And Berj may not want to have to coexist with and/or tiptoe around her — especially after she reportedly made a bizarre FOIA request to North Carolina as to communications between Senior Associate Athletic Director Robbi Pickeral Evans and CBS regarding, apparently, the disastrous interview that sparked a torrent of unflattering coverage and criticism of Hudson and Belichick.
However it plays out, Berj is in play to join forces again with Belichick. Where it goes from here will be particularly interesting, possibly awkward, and potentially fascinating.
Patriots running back Tre’Veyon Henderson is the NFL Offensive Rookie of the Month for November.
After a slow start to his rookie season, Henderson has become a major playmaker in the Patriots’ offense, leading all NFL rookies with five touchdowns and 102.8 scrimmage yards per game in November.
With touchdowns of 55 and 69 yards in Week 10, Henderson became just the fourth rookie in NFL history to have multiple 50-yard rushing touchdowns in the same game.
The last Patriot to be named Offensive Rookie of the Month was Mac Jones in November of 2021.
With the Patriots leading the race for the No. 1 seed and home-field advantage throughout the NFC playoffs, Henderson is making New England very glad it took Henderson with the 38th pick in the draft.
Once upon a time, a very long time ago, I managed to pass enough classes to secure a couple of undergraduate degrees from Carnegie Mellon University. (From time to time, I wonder whether it was a clerical error.) And so it was with a significant degree of delight that I received an email on Wednesday from CMU that wasn’t asking for, you know, money.
We receive many pitches regarding different studies and trends and other things that ultimately don’t come close to meeting the threshold for sharing here. This one caught my eye, mainly because it confirms one of the things I’ve said consistently about the key to being successful in football.
Unpredictability. In all things. (Most recently, we focused on the importance of unpredictability as to whether a team will, or won’t, go for it on fourth down.)
The folks at Carnegie Mellon have engaged in a study that focuses on the unpredictability of the timing before the snap, specifically as it relates to pre-snap motion.
Ron Yurko, an assistant professor of statistics and data science, used advanced statistical modeling with more than two thousand NFL plays and player-tracking data. The study, performed with Ph.D. student Quang Nguyen and recently published in the Journal of the Royal Statistical Society: Series A, found that quarterbacks who vary the timing between pre-snap motion and the snap face have greater overall success.
“Quarterbacks who vary the time between a receiver’s pre-snap motion and the ball snap face less defensive pressure or ‘havoc,’ like sacks or interceptions,” Yurko said. “This is because predictability allows defenses to anticipate the snap and disrupt the play.”
The study found that Patrick Mahomes and Tom Brady are the best at engineering this extra layer of unpredictability.
It’s a subtle yet important wrinkle in the operation of an offense. Most develop a rhythm that makes it easier to instinctively anticipate the timing of the snap. When watching a game, that pattern often emerges. And if it can be senses on the screen, it can be sensed on the field. And if the defense trusts that the snap is coming, it erases the inherent edge the offense enjoys from knowing when the play will start.
Perhaps teams have been studying this factor privately. This is the first effort to publicly quantify the trait and to characterize it as a skill.
It definitely is a skill. It keeps defenses on their heels. It keeps them guessing. It prevents them from developing a sense as to when it’s time to go.
Unpredictability. The more a defense knows what’s coming and when it’s coming, the easier it is to stop the offense. The less the defense knows, the more that guesswork is required.
One bad guess can blow a play open. Which can blow a game open. Which can be the difference between making it to the playoffs, or advancing deep into the postseason.
Much about the operation of an NFL offense is complicated. This is simple. Within the storm of everything a quarterback processes before a play starts, varying the timing of the snap in relation to the pre-snap movement of players can add to the overall success of everything that happens once the quarterback has the ball in his hands.
Bill Belichick is a finalist for the Pro Football Hall of Fame. Another coach who’s laying the foundation for a bronze bust of his own hopes Belichick will return to pro football.
“I’ll be honest with you, I miss him not being in the league,” Broncos coach Sean Payton told reporters on Wednesday. “I miss him not being in the league, and I wouldn’t be surprised, and I would be somewhat hopeful that he ends up back in the league. We’d all be better for it. He’s something.”
Belichick’s buyout costs a miniscule, for NFL owners, $1 million. But there’s no clear indication that anyone would want to hire him, given the latter years of his time in New England (which included putting a defensive coach in charge of the offense), the pettiness he and his consigliere, Mike Lombardi, have displayed toward the Patriots specifically and the NFL generally, his 2025 performance at North Carolina, the baggage and distractions he’d bring with him in a return to the pro game, and his reputation for hoping to take over the entire football operation in lieu of simply coaching the team.
Belichick should have a no-debate, no-brainer case for Canton. He should automatically gain entry. He’s one of the greatest coaches in NFL history. Failure to put him in immediately would undermine the credibility of the entire selection process.
That doesn’t mean Belichick currently is a viable candidate to become an NFL head coach.
Still, 31 teams can say “no way.” It only takes one to whisper, “Why not?”
The college game clearly isn’t for Belichick. For plenty of pro teams that haven’t won many games in recent years, they could do a lot worse than Belichick. And they have.
It nevertheless feels like an uphill climb. Which creates an interesting irony. It will be much easier for Belichick to gain a spot among the all-time immortals than it will be for him to get another opportunity to coach one of the NFL’s franchises.
While he’s currently the head coach at the University of North Carolina, Bill Belichick was officially named a finalist for the Pro Football Hall of Fame Class of 2026 on Wednesday.
Belichick is the coach nominee for this year’s class, advancing from the nine Semifinalists in the category. The eight others were Tom Coughlin, Mike Holmgren, Chuck Knox, Buddy Parker, Dan Reeves, Marty Schottenheimer, George Seifert, and Mike Shanahan.
“To be in this position is extremely humbling,” Belichick said in a statement released to social media on Wednesday. “I am honored to be named the coaching finalist for the Pro Football Hall of Fame Class of 2026. Thank you to the selection committee and the Pro Football Hall of Fame. I am thankful for the organizations and thousands of players and coaches that I worked with for my 49 years in the NFL. This is a cherish able reflection of all my teammates throughout my NFL career.
“Congratulations to the other finalists Roger Craig, Kenny Anderson, L.C. Greenwood, and of course, Robert Kraft.
“I hope to see all of the deserving Patriots selected this year.”
Belichick has an overall record of 333-178 in the NFL — second only to Hall of Famer Don Shula’s 347 career NFL victories — and won 31 of 44 games (.705) in the playoffs as head coach of the Browns (1991-1995) and Patriots (2000-2023). Among his numerous accolades, Belichick is a member of the NFL 100 All-Time Team.
