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One of the biggest surprises of the NFL offseason was Bill Belichick’s inability to find a job. He has 333 wins and six Super Bowl rings over nearly 30 seasons of head coaching. And yet, as the 2024 season gets underway with voluntary OTAs across the NFL, Belichick remains unemployed.
One man might have more to do with that than anyone else: New England Patriots owner Robert Kraft. According to a report from ESPN’s Don Van Natta Jr., Seth Wickersham and Jeremy Fowler, a conversation Kraft had with Atlanta Falcons owner Arthur Blank was the main reason the Falcons passed on Belichick as head coach and went with Raheem Morris instead.
The Falcons were the only team that really engaged with Belichick during the hiring portion of the offseason. Every other team with a head coach opening passed on him, not even offering him an interview. But the Falcons appeared to be serious about Belichick — or at least Blank was. He reportedly had two lengthy interviews with Belichick on his megayacht.
But Belichick’s candidacy wasn’t popular within the organization. According to ESPN, when Blank asked his top executives to rank all the candidates for the job, Belichick didn’t finish in the top three.
And when Blank reached out to Kraft, one of his his closest friends among all NFL owners, for advice about hiring Belichick, Kraft reportedly gave him numerous reasons to back off and go in a different direction. Via ESPN:
But in a conversation with Blank, Kraft delivered a stark assessment of Belichick’s character, according to a source who spoke to two people: a close Kraft friend and a longtime Belichick confidant. The source quoted the Belichick source as saying, “Robert called Arthur to warn him not to trust Bill.” That account was backed up, the source said, by the close Kraft friend.
Multiple sources said that Kraft spoke with “some candor” to Blank about Belichick, though the sources declined to elaborate. One source close to Belichick said Kraft “was a big part” of why the Falcons passed on hiring him.
So while Kraft has been publicly supportive of Belichick, his personal feelings are reportedly less kind. A source close to Kraft told ESPN “[Kraft] found Bill to be extremely difficult and obstinate and kind of stubborn and, in the end, not worthy of his trust. And also very, very, very arrogant.” A spokesperson for Kraft denied to ESPN that the Patriots owner said anything negative about Belichick during his conversations with Blank.
According to ESPN, Belichick had no knowledge about what Kraft reportedly said on the phone call, and thought he had the Falcons job in the bag. He found out with the rest of the world on Jan. 25 that the Falcons had decided to hire Morris instead.
While there’s likely zero chance Belichick works for the Falcons in the future, he doesn’t believe he’s done coaching and reportedly has a list of three teams he wouldn’t mind working for: the Dallas Cowboys, New York Giants and Philadelphia Eagles. Belichick has his sights set high, but those are wise choices: all three of those teams could be in the market for a new head coach in 2025 if the current coaches in those jobs (Mike McCarthy of the Cowboys, Brian Daboll of the Giants and Nick Sirianni of the Eagles) don’t find more success in 2024.