With six head-coaching openings in the NFL, and possibly more, Bill Belichick’s name will be mentioned publicly for one or more of the jobs. Whether he’s privately considered for any of them remains to be seen.
Appearing on the Let’s Go! podcast, Belichick was asked by host Jim Gray whether Belichick is interested in returning to the NFL.
“Nothing’s changed,” Belichick said. “I’m where I was a month ago. I’m here at North Carolina. I really appreciate the love and support that we’ve gotten from the community down here, from the school, from Chancellor Roberts, the ADs, Bubba Cunningham, Steve Newmark, working with Mike Lombardi and our staff here. We’re building a good program and I’m excited about the direction we’re headed in.”
It wasn’t a “no.” But it’s not relevant until someone wants to talk to him.
Since being fired two years ago, he has had one interview, with the Falcons. The Falcons are looking again, with a clean slate (for now) in the front office.
Would owner Arthur Blank want to give Belichick another look, periodic trolling by Jordon Hudson notwithstanding? While it’s unclear where his coaching skills currently reside (e.g., would Belichick put a defensive coach in charge of the offense?), we’re confident that Belichick wouldn’t have given $100 million guaranteed to Kirk Cousins before using a top-10 pick on Michael Penix Jr. if he’d been the Atlanta coach in 2024.
Belichick is currently on the board for five existing vacancies: +4000 for the Giants, +8000 for the Titans, +4000 for the Browns, +1200 for the Falcons, and +1600 for the Raiders. (DraftKings doesn’t have odds for the Cardinals’ job, for some reason.)
A team will first need to be interested in Belichick. And he’d need to be interested in the team. (Belichick expressed to Gray disdain for teams that use search firms, which could make the search firm running the Falcons’ search less inclined to seek him out.)
Last year, when it became clear to Belichick that he wouldn’t get a job in the 2025 cycle, he went to North Carolina. Lombardi thereafter questioned whether there are any good jobs in the NFL, while also explaining that he and Belichick prefer working in college football.
Most of the jobs that come open are open for a reason. Still, if Belichick wants to catch Don Shula for the all-time wins record, no number of victories at UNC will matter.
Tonight, the Broncos will go for their 13th win of the season. It’s something coach Sean Payton has accomplished four times in his tenure with the Saints.
Barring what would be one of the biggest upsets of the year, the two-touchdown-favored Broncos will get there. And Payton will join former Browns and Patriots coach Bill Belichick as the only coaches with five 13-win seasons.
Payton has a bigger goal that would be unprecedented. No coach has won a Super Bowl with two different franchises. And the Broncos, if they win out, will be the No. 1 seed in the AFC, putting them a pair of home games from getting to Santa Clara, for the first Super Bowl played there since the last time the Broncos won it.
Payton previously did it in 2009, 2011, 2018, and 2019. Belichick did it seven times: 2003, 2004, 2007, 2010, 2011, 2016, and 2017.
Several coaches have taken two teams to a Super Bowl — Don Shula, Bill Parcells, Dan Reeves, Dick Vermeil, Mike Holmgren, John Fox, and Andy Reid. None has ever won it with two different teams.
And every coach who has won a Super Bowl with one team before moving on to another team is well aware of the fact that no one has won it with two franchises.
Others current coaches have a shot over the balance of their careers to win a Super Bowl with a second team include Nick Sirianni (if he ends up with another team), Reid (if he ends up with a third team), Sean McVay (if he coaches a different team at some point), Belichick (if he makes his way back to the NFL and it goes far differently than his year at UNC), Pete Carroll, and John Harbaugh and Mike Tomlin (if either or both make a fresh start in the coming years).
Jon Gruden also has a shot, if he returns to coach a team other than the Buccaneers.
For now, Payton has the best opportunity to do it, sooner than later.
Bill Belichick is on the verge of hiring a new offensive coordinator at North Carolina.
Via Pete Nakos of On3.com, Belichick is finalizing a deal with Bobby Petrino to replace Freddie Kitchens as the man in charge of the UNC offense.
Petrino previously served as the head coach at Louisville and Arkansas. He also coached the Falcons in 2007, abruptly resigning in December of his first season to take the Arkansas job.
Petrino and Chip Kelly reportedly were the two coaches Belichick was eyeing the most closely.
The move, in our view, has no relevance to a potential return by Belichick to the NFL level, if an opportunity arises. The question is whether an opportunity will arise. For now, and despite reports seemingly aimed at breathing life into the possibility, it seems like a long shot.
The one place we’re watching the most closely isn’t any of the teams that have been mentioned elsewhere. We’re keeping an eye on Tampa Bay, for various reasons.
First, Todd Bowles wasn’t hired by a traditional source; he landed in the job by default after Bruce Arians resigned in late March. Second, the Buccaneers have imploded, going 1-6 after a 6-2 start. They’re now at risk of yielding their four-year hammerlock on the NFC South to the Panthers and missing the playoffs for the first time since 2019.
Third, the Bucs have a history of creative (to put it kindly) and/or unusual (to put it less kindly) coaching hires. Fourth, Belichick (we believe) has been eyeing that job.
Last year, his consigliere, Mike Lombardi, tried to start a rumor that Bowles would be retiring. It seemed to be an effort by Lombardi to speak an opening for Belichick into existence.
Regardless, that’s all to be determined. For now, Belichick has determined to hire Petrino.
North Carolina coach and likely first-ballot Pro Football Hall of Famer Bill Belichick recently fired offensive coordinator Freddie Kitchens, a former NFL head coach. Belichick reportedly is focusing on two other former NFL head coaches to replace Kitchens.
Via Pete Nakos of On3.com, the search is focusing on Chip Kelly and Bobby Petrino.
Kelly, who was fired last month as offensive coordinator of the Raiders, previously coached the Eagles and 49ers. Petrino coached the Falcons in 2007, abruptly leaving during his first season to become the head coach at Arkansas.
There’s still a question swirling as to whether Belichick will abruptly leave Chapel Hill to coach in the NFL. With a buyout of only $1 million, it would be easy for him to exit. The harder part will be finding an NFL owner who would hire him.
While there’s a deeper dive to be done at the proper time (and there’s one team, I believe, that possibly would consider him if its head-coaching position becomes open), remember this: Belichick got only one interview after he was fired by the Patriots, and he took the North Carolina job in December 2024 after it became clear that no team with a current or expected vacancy would give him a wink-nod assurance that he’d get the job.
And that was a year ago. Things have changed since then, in a variety of ways. To put it as mildly as possible, few if any of those changes make him more attractive than he was in the 2024 and 2025 NFL hiring cycle.
Bill Belichick has survived a full season in Chapel Hill. Two of his key assistants have not.
Via Pete Thamel of ESPN.com, Belichick has fired offensive coordinator Freddie Kitchens and special-teams coordinator Mike Priefer.
Kitchens, the head coach of the Browns in 2019 and the interim Tar Heels coach in 2024, stayed on after Belichick was hired last year. Belichick brought Priefer to UNC after two decades in the NFL, and two years out of football.
Priefer was a member of Kitchens’s staff in Cleveland.
Belichick will now be hiring two new coordinators as he prepares for his second second at UNC. If it doesn’t go much better than his first season, there may not be a third.
And coaching only goes so far. At the college level, it’s about the quality of the players. For 2025, the Tar Heels didn’t have enough good players. They’ll need better players if they want to have a better outcome in 2026.
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.
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.
Bill Belichick and Robert Kraft are finalists for the Pro Football Hall of Fame Class of 2026.
The Hall announced Wednesday that Kraft is the contributor nominee and Belichick the coach nominee in the next class of inductees. Ken Anderson, Roger Craig and L.C. Greenwood are the seniors finalists.
The remaining bar to clear: Approval from at least 80 percent of the members of the full selection committee at their annual meeting next year in advance of the class unveiling during Super Bowl LX week in San Francisco.
For the second year, the finalists from these categories within the selection process are competing directly against each other under bylaws the Pro Football Hall of Fame’s Board of Directors approved in 2024. The revision to the process helps ensure the exclusivity of inclusion in the game’s most elite fraternity.
Each member of the selection committee votes for only three of these five finalists. With the bylaws revision, a maximum of three of this year’s Finalists can be elected. If none of the five individuals receives 80 percent approval, then the individual who receives the most support would be elected to the Class of 2026.
Kraft, the owner and CEO of the Patriots since 1994, has seen his team win six Super Bowls and play in four others. All with Belichick as his head coach.
Kraft has also served on 17 owners committees, including the broadcast/media committee since 1997, which he has chaired for the past 18 years.
The other eight semifinalists in the contributor category this year were K.S. “Bud” Adams, Roone Arledge, Ralph Hay, Frank Bucko” Kilroy, Art Rooney Jr., Clark Shaughnessy, Seymour Siwoff and Buddy Young.
Belichick, the current coach at the University of North Carolina, 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. Among his numerous accolades, Belichick is a member of the NFL 100 All-Time Team.
The eight other Semifinalists in the Coach category this year were Tom Coughlin, Mike Holmgren, Chuck Knox, Buddy Parker, Dan Reeves, Marty Schottenheimer, George Seifert and Mike Shanahan.
Anderson played his entire career for the Bengals, 192 games overall through the 1986 season. He finished his career with four Pro Bowl nods, a league MVP award for the 1981 season and 32,838 passing yards with 197 passing touchdowns.
Craig won three Super Bowls with the 49ers, where he spent eight seasons before a year with the Raiders and two with the Vikings. For his career, he totaled 13,100 yards from scrimmage and scored 73 touchdowns. He was named the league’s offensive player of the year in 1988, when he also finished third in MVP voting.
Greenwood, a member of the famous “Steel Curtain” defensive units in the 1970s, played his entire 170-game career over 13 seasons with the Steelers. An undrafted free agent out of Arkansas-Pine Bluff, Greenwood won four Super Bowl rings, was named a first-team All-Pro defensive end twice and was selected to play in six Pro Bowls.
Also advancing to the semifinalist stage in the Seniors category were Henry Ellard, Joe Jacoby, Eddie Meador, Stanley Morgan, Steve Tasker and Otis Taylor.
Players in the seniors category last could have appeared in a professional game in the 2000 season.
When Bill Belichick arrived at North Carolina, the question was, “How long will he stay?” After a 4-8 season, the question has become, “How long will they want him to stay?”
Via Greg Barnes of Inside Carolina, UNC is committed to Belichick “for at least another year.”
The disappointing season has sparked concerns that it’s not going to work for Belichick at the college level. However, a quick scuttling of the experiment would spark a total buyout in the range of $30 million.
Not everyone agrees. Luke DeCock of the Raleigh News & Observer makes the case for writing the checks and ending it now.
“He was always a bad fit as a college coach, a role where, unlike the NFL, your public demeanor is a big part of the job,” DeCock wrote.
“What’s it going to cost North Carolina to move on? What’s it going to take for Belichick to save face? What’s the price of a reset button? Whatever it costs, it’s time to pay it. Whatever has to happen behind the scenes, it’s time to do it. They broke it. Now they’ll have to buy it.”
Or to continue to tolerate it, hopeful there’s a light switch Belichick and his consigliere, Mike Lombardi, can accidentally find in the darkness. Lombo’s plan to bloat the roster with freshmen is a bold choice. They need better players. That means finding the right ones, picking the right ones, and recruiting the right ones.
At the college level, it’s about quality of players. North Carolina was unable under Belichick and Lombardi to get enough good ones for 2025. They’ll get another chance to do it in 2026, apparently. (That said, an argument could be made to require Belichick to find a new G.M. for the second try.)
If it doesn’t work 2026, why would anyone want to see whether 2027 will be any different? Currently, some have seen enough to conclude it won’t work in 2026.
