Falcons owner Arthur Blank said that Bill Belichick never asked for total personnel control of the team. Belichick interviewed with the team in person twice, signaling to many in the media that he was likely to get the job. However, the Falcons ultimately went in a different direction, hiring former Rams Defensive Coordinator Raheem Morris. Arthur Blank wanted to clarify his interactions with Belichick to the public.
“I do want to make it 1,000% clear, want to go to 2,000% or 100,000, whatever percent you want to use. Bill Belichick never asked for, in our discussion, full control of the personnel or the building or anything of that nature.”
The VIP Treatment
Belichick was flown into Atlanta on Blank’s private jet to meet with the team. The former New England Patriots head coach and six-time Super Bowl winner was looked at as the top candidate. He was the only coach of the eight other candidates to be interviewed in person. Some other coaching candidates included former Michigan head coach and current Chargers head coach Jim Harbaugh, 49ers defensive coordinator Steve Wilks, and Eagles offensive coordinator Brian Johnson. Mr. Blank even took Belichick out to dinner. This seems like a lot of money to be spending on a guy who you eventually don’t even hire. But to a guy like Arthur Blank whose net worth is 8.3 billion dollars, that’s just a drop in the bucket.
Why Couldn’t Bill Belichick and Blank Close The Deal?
As Arthur Blank stated, if the reason why Belichick wasn’t hired was not because of him wanting total personnel control, what was it?
The team has struggled the last few seasons
The past few seasons have not been kind to Bill Belichick and the Patriots. This season the team had their worst record under Belichick, their worst season before 2023? 1992 when they went 2-14. Belichick has certainly struggled without the GOAT Tom Brady. Belichick has always had a bit of an alternative coaching style. He didn’t do things like how many other NFL coaches would. He would trade or not re-sign star players to send a message to the rest of the current Patriots. Belichick would rarely keep the team’s first-round pick in the draft.
The league’s most accomplished coach would be stingy with signing and keeping players and would do more with less. And he could do that because he had players like Tom Brady, Randy Moss, and terrific defenses in the early years. The Patriots head coach could continue his success because Brady was still around and he had great pass catchers like Rob Gronkowski. Players like Julian Edelman and Chris Hogan became breakout stars.
Belichick’s struggles were spearheaded by the complete lack of organization over coaching hires and coaching titles. Hiring Matt Patricia to run the offense in the 2022 season was an idiotic move. He should have known that using a defensive-minded coach in an exclusively offensive role was a recipe for disaster. Patricia’s absence from the role this season showed that it wasn’t so much his problem but Belichick’s, and the fact that his complete control over football operations is what is hindering the Patriots after Tom Brady.
Bill Belichick: A bleak post-Brady era
Belichick is 29-38 after Tom Brady left the Patriots. The team has missed the playoffs three out of the last four years. The roster has been weak and untalented, but who is to blame for that? Belichick, who in addition to being the head coach, has built the entire roster as part of his de-facto general manager duties.
With Brady and all these other offensive weapons gone, Belichick has struggled and refused to adapt to the changing team and overall NFL landscape. Belichick invested in a quarterback in the 2021 draft in Mac Jones but did not give him any starting-caliber receivers. Unless you are a Patriots fan, you probably have little to no idea who New England’s wide receivers have been for the past couple of seasons.
It is sufficient to say that Tom Brady was the engine that was powering the Patriots’ success. And while Bill Belichick was still a great coach for the Patriots, it was so much easier to be successful when you had the greatest quarterback of all time at the helm. These four seasons have shown that Belichick is not equipped to coach in the modern NFL without changing his coaching and mainly management style.
Bill Belichick: A lack of relatability
It is no secret that Bill Belichick is not the most charismatic, inspiring, or relatable head coach in the NFL. His no-nonsense approach to coaching isn’t the most inviting environment for players. Multiple former Patriots have said that it is a tough environment to play in.
“They don’t have fun there,” former Patriots defensive end Cassius Marsh told the San Francisco Chronicle. “There’s nothing fun about it. There’s nothing happy about it. I didn’t enjoy any of my time there, you know what I’m saying? It made me for the first time in my life think about not playing football because I hated it that much.”
“It can be a tough environment,” former offensive tackle Nate Solder wrote. “It’s very businesslike, and at times it can be cold. Everything in New England is predicated on performance. It’s a place where people sometimes treat you differently based on how you practiced that day or how you answered a question in a meeting. One day, you could walk around the facility feeling like a Pro Bowler — the next, like you’re about to get cut.”
Former Patriots wide receiver Danny Amendola had some similar things to say.
“It’s not easy, that’s for sure. He’s an (expletive) sometimes,” Amendola told the Miami Herald. “There were a lot of things I didn’t like about playing for him, but I must say, the things I didn’t like were all in regards to getting the team better, and I respected him,” he said. “I didn’t like practicing in the snow, I didn’t like practicing in the rain, but that was going to make us a better football team and that was going to make me a better football player. It wasn’t easy, and he’d be the first to admit, at the [Super Bowl] ring ceremony, that it wasn’t easy playing for him. The silver lining was that we were at the ring ceremony.”
The key difference to playing for coach Bill Belichick in the Tom Brady era versus now is that it is an uptight, very “businesslike” environment as Nate Solder said, but at least you’re appearing in the Super Bowl or AFC Championship regularly. Now, the players are in this same environment but aren’t winning games and aren’t even making it to the playoffs! Belichick’s unrelatable nature and inability to have his finger on the pulse of the NFL to know what players like is one of the reasons he is out of a job currently.
Bill Belichick Part Of Changing Head Coach Landscape
There is an ongoing trend in the NFL of younger coaches being hired. Coaches like Bill Belichick and former Seahawks coach Pete Carroll are out. Carroll is still with the team in an advising role but has been stripped of his major duties.
Younger coaches like Jerod Mayo and Mike McDonald are replacing these geezers like Bill Belichick and are ushering in a new generation of NFL head coaches. Texans head coach Demeco Ryans and seasoned but still young Rams head coach Sean McVay are other young head coaches in a league that used to be full of fat, old head coaches. The NFL’s coaches are getting younger, slimmer, and buffer.
Bill Belichick’s hiring failed with the Falcons for several reasons. Can you imagine Bill Belichick coaching a team that he beat in that wild Super Bowl comeback? I can’t. That would be a little weird. That’d be like Tom Brady playing for the Jets or Aaron Rodgers playing for the Bears. People involving themselves with teams they have dominated in the past seems strange. Maybe Arthur Blank was going to hire Belichick but at the last minute, he thought, “Can we really have our next head coach be the guy who demoralized our entire fan base by coming back from a 28-3 deficit and beating us in the Super Bowl? No, I don’t think I can let that slide.”
![Arthur Blank right here sums up what it is like to be a Falcons fan.](https://totalapexsports.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/02/Arthur-blank-demoralized.jpg)
No team hiring Bill Belichick for this season shows a decline in a once-successful head coach.