After parting ways with the New England Patriots this offseason, Bill Belichick spoke with the Atlanta Falcons about potentially becoming the team’s next head coach. Belichick ultimately didn’t get the job, and it sounds like Patriots team owner Robert Kraft could be a big reason why.
According to a report from Don Van Natta Jr., Seth Wickersham and Jeremy Fowler of ESPN, Robert Kraft had some pretty brutal things to say about Bill Belchick when he spoke to Atlanta Falcons team owner Arthur Blank about his former coach. And those words from Kraft seem to have a pretty significant impact on the Falcon’s decision not to hire Belichick.
“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,” ESPN reported this Week.
“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,” the report from ESPN continued.
The sources said Kraft made clear to Blank that ‘you’ll never have a warm conversation with’ Belichick, echoing what Bill Parcells told Kraft in 1996 when he wanted to bust the budget and hire Belichick. ‘Blank likes coaches who feel part of a family,’ a Falcons source said, ‘and it wasn’t going to be that way with Bill.'”
Needless to say, it certainly doesn’t sound like Kraft’s review helped Belichick’s case.
