Former New England Patriots head coach Bill Belichick has seen his fair share of NFL hiring processes over the course of his coaching career. And recently, he sounded off about one thing in particular that he is not too big of a fan of when it comes to the NFL coaching carousel.
Every year, we see assistant coaches from playoff teams receive significant interest from teams who are in need of a head coach who missed out on the postseason.
In Belichick’s eyes, this creates an unneeded distraction for a number of playoff teams.
“I’ve never been a big fan of it,” Belichick said in the latest episode of the Let’s Go! podcast. “I think it’s really unfortunate when you have a team, including the coaches and the coordinators, worked so hard all year to get to the playoffs, to have an opportunity to play in conference championships and Super Bowls, and then they’re totally distracted by another team, who was a bad team, who has a coaching change, infringing on that team that’s trying to get to a championship by hiring one of their top coaches.
“Nobody would be happy if that was a player. But for a coach, that’s also very disruptive, especially when you’re the playcaller. I mean, it’s just human nature to be distracted by a potential job opening, staff, and change of lifestyle from a coordinator to a head coach when you’re trying to prepare and call plays in a critical game.”
Belichick does seemingly raise a good point on paper. This postseason, we saw this exact scenario play out for the Detroit Lions who of course were upset in the Divisional Round by the Washington Commanders.
Both Lions offensive coordinator Ben Johnson and defensive coordinator Aaron Glenn popped up on a number of NFL head coaching searches prior to their game against the Commanders. And you see how it turned out for the Lions this postseason…
Perhaps we see a rule put in place where NFL teams are not able to speak with or inquire with assistant coaches who are still coaching in the postseason moving forward.
Either way, it is interesting to see Belichick speaking out about this topic only after he has opted not to return to the NFL coaching scene.
Maybe this is why Belichick has opted to turn to the collegiate ranks moving forward, as he will be coaching at the University of North Carolina this coming college football season.
