Takeaways: Why Bill Belichick Won’t Get the Head Coaching Job He Wanted
By the end of Sunday night, Super Bowl LVIII will be set. And so are we, with this week’s Takeaways …
O.K., so it’s still weird that Bill Belichick wanted to be a head coach in 2024, and won’t be afforded that opportunity. It’s worth running through his résumé again. Six Super Bowl titles. Nine conference championships. Seventeen division titles. Thirteen AFC title game appearances. And all that over his first 20 years in New England.
How does a coach with that history get shut out?
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Well, Belichick’s list of suitors likely got narrowed for the same reason Tom Brady’s did four years ago, simply by the conditions that would need to exist for a team to go get him. It’d have to be a team that felt like it was close to contending, in a location that appealed to Belichick, with a setup and roster that could be shaped in his vision. Try applying all those elements to this year’s eight openings, and you’ll see how quickly the number gets whittled down.
Then, there’s how things with the Atlanta Falcons went. My understanding is Blank went into the process wanting to hire Belichick as coach. But those around the owner, fearing what that could mean for them, nudged him in different directions. After a while, the amount of change hiring Belichick could require weighed on Blank. Especially when taking into consideration that making that amount of change might only get him two years of Belichick.
And, again, none of this is really Belichick’s fault. It’s just that if you’re going to hire him, you have to go all in on that and, given that he’s not going to coach for another decade, it makes sense that that’d be hard for an owner to reckon with.
Now, all of that being said, it’s Belichick. The fact that no one is hiring him isn’t a great reflection on the league.
Aside from Belichick’s candidacy—I’ll say that I think the Falcons hit a home run in getting Raheem Morris. The Los Angeles Rams’ defensive coordinator is still just 47 years old, and he will have had a dozen years of experience in between his head coaching stints, going to Super Bowls with two teams along the way. He’s coached on both sides of the ball, he’s always had the leadership traits necessary, and everyone vouches for him.
All of which played into the decision that Arthur Blank made to hire him last week.
For Blank, really, the path here started with those ringing endorsements from people like Sean McVay, Mike Tomlin, Kyle Shanahan, Matt LaFleur and Mike McDaniel, each of whom have been with Morris at different points. And within those endorsements was something pretty interesting. All of them (save for Tomlin, who became a head coach before Morris did) explained that Morris helped them by being open about his own experience and showing a deep humility about how his three years in Tampa Bay went.
That Blank (and CEO Rich McKay) knew Morris from his six years as a Falcons assistant only further brought all of that to life for the committee, especially since those two had seen him as an assistant head coach, a secondary coach, a receivers coach, a defensive coordinator and, finally, in 2020, an interim head coach.
Then, there were the details that they picked up in the interviews. The first was with a search committee headed up by McKay, GM Terry Fontenot, assistant GM Kyle Smith and team president Greg Beadles. The second was in-person at Blank’s home and offices in Buckhead, Ga.
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• Morris showed a real capacity to keep growing, and that was reflected in how his defense changed, first from his Tampa-2 roots to fit what Quinn had run in Atlanta, and then to where the Rams were in a Vic Fangio–centric scheme in Los Angeles.
• Everyone knows Morris’s ability to galvanize, but having him in the room showed just how much he could connect with people from all walks of life, and how he could build key relationships to manage a team in the tough moments.
• Morris gave the team a combination of head-coaching experience and the feel of something fresh and new. Atlanta tried to tailor the process to the candidates. Belichick, for example, had his first interview one-on-one with Blank and was the only one to meet with the owner during that round. Vrabel and Jim Harbaugh met with smaller groups, rather than meeting with the whole committee. With Morris, it almost didn’t matter how the Falcons did it. And that made an impact.
• The Falcons knew Morris would also be able to attract an all-star staff, with people like Los Angeles’s sought-after pass-game coordinator Zac Robinson on his list (who is already on board).
• And, finally there was his ability to coach everyone on the roster. Anyone, the thought went, could coach Jake Matthews or Chris Lindstrom or Grady Jarrett. But Morris could do a lot more than that, able to get in the weeds at any position with his experience coaching both sides of the ball.
And with all that taken into account, this one ended similarly to how the Tennessee Titans closed on Brian Callahan (which we will get into below). Atlanta did second interviews with 49ers OC Bobby Slowik and Carolina Panthers DC Ejiro Evero. The Falcons also had one scheduled with Callahan, and Harbaugh, too. Plus, they had plans to travel to Detroit to meet with Johnson and Glenn, and to Baltimore to visit Macdonald and assistant head coach Anthony Weaver.
But with Morris scheduled to go to Seattle to interview Friday, and all the information to gather, to paraphrase that draft analogy again, there was no need to wait until February to hire a guy they loved in January. So it got done, then and there.
While we’re there, it’s worth mentioning, too, that owners now more than ever want going to work to be fun. I know how that sounds kind of silly. But it’s true. I remember hearing one reason why Jerry Jones drifted from his commitment to Bill Parcells in the aughts was because being owner wasn’t as much fun when Jones was more disconnected from it, nor when his football operation was so militaristic.
Nearly two decades later, my sense is a lot of owners think that—almost as if to say, implicitly, I didn’t spend billions on this team to not have a blast with it.
Add to that the fact that players aren’t coming up under drill sergeants in high school and college the way they used to (one reason Belichick would always pluck from Nick Saban and Urban Meyer’s programs was he knew their players could handle the rigors of being a Patriot), and you can see how good hiring logic can line up with what an owner wants to do anyway.
And while I don’t think all this is the only reason Belichick was left out, I do think it is a reason for it. And maybe it’s a reason with Mike Vrabel too. The likelihood Vrabel gets shut out is just as mind-blowing to me as the icing out of Belichick.
The Titans found out what a lot of people already knew: Callahan was a coach not just worth investigating, but one worth pursuing. The team’s search committee finished up with the Cincinnati Bengals offensive coordinator Monday and sent him off to meet with the business folks, the trainers and the analytics department. Tennessee then gathered its thoughts, with a shared sentiment that owner Amy Adams Struck was first to voice.
“This felt right,” she told the high-end group of her employees. “This felt right.”
By the time Callahan came back to the football side of the operation, he had an offer, and the Titans were canceling their interviews for the week. Tennessee, more or less, didn’t want to leave anything to chance. “It’s just like drafting someone,” one staffer says. “If you draft him at 13, why not take him?” Or, in this case, why gamble that the Atlanta Falcons and Carolina Panthers would see what the Titans did in Callahan, and let him take his second interviews there?
So Strunk had her coach, 13 days after firing Mike Vrabel.
What happened in the interim is interesting, and merits recounting, if for no other reason than Tennessee wasn’t a team planning to run a search when the season ended.
• The process kicked off, in earnest, as GM Ran Carthon finished his presser on the afternoon of Jan. 9—just hours after Strunk went into the meeting with Vrabel not knowing what she would do, and came out of it without a head football coach. Carthon and assistant GMs Chad Brinker and Anthony Robinson huddled Tuesday night and into Wednesday to compile names, landing on nine to send requests to that afternoon.
The nine: Callahan, Las Vegas Raiders interim coach Antonio Pierce, Ravens DC Mike Macdonald, New York Giants OC Mike Kafka, Slowik, Lions DC Aaron Glenn, Panthers OC Thomas Brown, Dallas Cowboys DC Dan Quinn and former Stanford coach David Shaw. The rest of the day, the three chief personnel people culled questions for the interviews, coming up with nine criteria on which to grade the candidates.
• Zoom meetings started Friday morning, and Callahan was first. Carthon, Brinker and Robinson had asked their scouts to dig on the candidates, while the three canvased their contacts and did the same. And what Callahan showed in his references, and through the first interview, was a consistency in how he saw things, and how his vision and philosophy matched what those who’d been around him said.
Carthon and Bengals coach Zac Taylor worked together with the Los Angeles Rams, and the rapport the two had helped the Titans go deeper into Callahan’s background, plus learn his responsibilities in Cincinnati. In the end, Taylor’s recommendation was one that resonated.
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• From there, the Titans identified five candidates for second interviews, and for this round, it was more than just Carthon, Brinker and Robinson. Strunk was there, as were board chair Kenneth Adams (Strunk’s nephew), team president Burke Nihill and director of football strategy Bryce Wasserman.
Before the group, Callahan again articulated his vision and beliefs, detailed his experience developing quarterbacks, and explained how working with stars at the beginning (Joe Burrow), middle (Matthew Stafford) and end (Peyton Manning) of their careers gave him a complete education on how to handle the position.
But it was after all that when Callahan may have shoved this one over the goal line—sitting one-on-one with Carthon and getting him out of interview mode, to a place where the two were just having a natural conversation about football. Not long after that, Callahan said goodbye to the seven powerbrokers he was tasked with winning over, en route to those other meetings that were set up for him, not knowing he’d effectively ended Tennessee’s search.
Because, as Strunk told the room, everything about it felt right.
Seattle’s search is a little different than most, because the Seahawks didn’t go into the process the way most teams do, looking for some massive level of change. The roster has a nice well of young talent. The atmosphere in the building was good last year. The unique energy that radiated over Pete Carroll’s 14 years remains, too.
And along those lines, I get the sense that owner Jody Allen, GM John Schneider & Co. would like to build on everything Carroll left behind, not tear it down.
That, to me, is reflected in the names that are still alive in the search. Former defensive coordinator Quinn, Evero, Kafka (an Andy Reid disciple) and Raiders DC Patrick Graham (even with his New England roots) have a positive, cerebral approach to the job. So, too, do Johnson and Macdonald, both of whom, as we detailed Friday, remain in the hunt. Seattle is hoping to travel to Detroit this week to meet with Johnson, while the rules make things more complicated on interviewing Macdonald.
Regardless of what happens, the list does hint at a group of decision-makers leaning into what the Seahawks already are, and what’s brought them so much success, instead of going the other way. Which in this case is a pretty wise way to approach it.
Jerod Mayo’s first staff in New England is likely to blend new and old. First, I’d expect an announcement shortly to make public the promotion of defensive line coach DeMarcus Covington to defensive coordinator. I could still see the Patriots backstopping that hire to help Covington on the back end of the defense, with Denver Broncos DBs coach Christian Parker on the radar.
All signs point to the Patriots promoting DL coach DeMarcus Covington to defensive coordinator, per sources. Should be official early next week, New England has called other candidates to tell them they're out.
— Albert Breer (@AlbertBreer) January 27, 2024
Then, there’s the two phases Mayo has less involvement.
On offense, Rams tight ends coach and former Patriots assistant Nick Caley will get the first crack at a second interview: He flew in from Los Angeles on Sunday, with dinner that night and meetings Monday. Niners assistants Brian Fleury and Klint Kubiak interviewed along with Lions assistant Tanner Engtrand, and the team plans to talk with Raiders assistant Scott Turner and former Bears OC Luke Getsy. The Patriots also met with former Seahawks OC Shane Waldron, who ultimately landed in Chicago, and Robinson, who we mentioned above is headed for Atlanta.
And coming with Caley from Los Angeles for his own second interview is Rams special teams assistant Jeremy Springer.
My guess is the Patriots will have most of the big hires wrapped up this week. It is interesting to see the blend here between coaches with New England experience, such as Covington, and folks from the McVay–Shanahan tree (Fleury, at this point, would be a name to watch), plus Caley, who has worked his way into being a combination of both.
How Fangio fits in Philadelphia bears watching. The Eagles announced their hiring of Fangio on Saturday night, and thus ended what really was a two-year courtship of the former Broncos coach from Philadelphia. Through 2022, the team did everything but have Fangio measure out an office to line him up as their contingency plan, in the event Jonathan Gannon bolted for a head coaching job. Officially, he served as a “consultant.”
All of that came apart simply due to timing. Gannon did land a job with Arizona, but that didn’t crystallize until just before last year’s Super Bowl, which was well after Fangio agreed to take the Dolphins job, at $4.65 million per year. Fangio went to Miami, and the Eagles turned to Sean Desai instead.
Since, Desai and Fangio have both effectively been fired. The former was first stripped of play-calling, then dismissed. The latter’s situation was messier. Fangio’s one-voice approach to running the defense wore on other coaches—an example being that he didn’t allow position coaches to present their work to the defense, instead gathering information from them and doing it himself. That sort of approach is decidedly old school, and seeped through to players who, by the end of the season, started to tune Fangio out.
So while Fangio may have wanted to go to Philadelphia all along, his departure from Miami wasn’t exactly voluntary. And my sense is whoever’s next (former Chargers coach Brandon Staley meets with the Dolphins on Sunday) will have to employ a more collaborative style, plus mesh better with stars such as Jalen Ramsey.
Before heading from Maryland to Alabama, here are my quick-hitters going into Super Bowl bye week (and Senior Bowl week) …
• In Friday’s Tip Sheet, GMs weighed in on the importance of Senior Bowl week, which kicks off Monday on the Gulf Coast. Indianapolis Colts GM Chris Ballard got back to me just after it ran, so I figured this would be a good spot to run his take.
“The Senior Bowl is an extremely important and valuable scouting opportunity for the entire league,” Ballard texted. “It’s really the first opportunity to interact with [the players] and get to know who they are as a person. It also helps confirm everything we saw over their careers in college. Jim [Nagy] and his staff do an outstanding job of getting the best talent at the game so we can see them compete against equal-like talent. It’s invaluable.”
• Evero has emerged as an interesting figure to watch in the next few weeks. He’s on a deal at over $3 million per year to be the Carolina’s defensive coordinator, but was hired as part of a Frank Reich’s staff now being inherited by Dave Canales. Meanwhile, the Packers and Rams—whose head coaches know Evero well—have openings. They would both have the 43-year-old, if available, near or at the top of their lists. And those places, at least on paper, could better pipeline Evero into a head-coaching shot. So … stay tuned.
• While we’re with the Panthers, the hire of Chiefs VP of football operations, Brandt Tilis, has been in the works for a couple of weeks (he’s cleaned out his office in Kansas City, and wasn’t on the trips to Buffalo or Baltimore). It should set Carolina up in a way similar to how the Lions, Rams and 49ers are, with a scouting type as GM paired up with someone adept on the cap, analytics and operations side. In this case, new GM Dan Morgan would be Brad Holmes, Les Snead or John Lynch, and Tilis would be Mike Disner, Kevin Demoff or Paraag Marathe.
• And one last thing on Carolina—Canales’s connection to Morgan helped him land the job there, but he will ultimately be judged on how Bryce Young develops at quarterback. Canales spent the past five of 13 years in Seattle working with the quarterbacks, helping in the transition from Russell Wilson to Geno Smith, then guiding Baker Mayfield back out of the quarterbacking wilderness this year. So his résumé with guys at that position is pretty good.
• Harbaugh may be on the verge of his first Chargers’ win, with the expected news that Michigan defensive coordinator Jesse Minter will follow him to Los Angeles. Among those who worked with both in Baltimore years ago, Minter is considered a pretty close comp to Macdonald. (Harbaugh was picking between the two in 2021, took Macdonald, then hired Minter to replace him when Macdonald returned to the Ravens.) And we’ve seen what Macdonald has accomplished in two years as John Harbaugh’s DC. I wouldn’t be surprised if Minter is among the NFL’s best defensive coordinators in short order.
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• The Eagles’ hire of Kellen Moore is interesting in that Moore will be the first OC that Nick Sirianni has had who he did not have previous experience. Sirianni and Shane Steichen were together with the Chargers, and Brian Johnson had two years as their QB coach before becoming OC last year. How that works, and how much the Eagles change an offense tailored specifically to Jalen Hurts, bears watching.
• Slowik has done well in interviews, sitting down twice with the Washington Commanders, who he has a natural connection with after he and GM Adam Peters were together in San Francisco. But at this point, it looks more likely that Slowik will be back in Houston—which would be great news for C.J. Stroud, even if it is just for one more year.
• Speaking of the Commanders, as we said Friday, they’ll have a full contingent in Detroit on Monday to meet with Johnson and Glenn. Meanwhile, Quinn will be traveling to Washington to meet with all of them back in Washington, D.C. on Tuesday. So that one is moving too.
• For what it’s worth, Panthers OC Thomas Brown did really well interviewing for the Titans’ job. As was the case with the highly regarded Evero, Carolina’s season did weigh Brown’s candidacy down a bit, naturally. But he’s one to keep an eye on in 2025, for sure.
• Lastly: I’ve heard a lot of complaining about the new rules and hiring timeline, and how awkward or weird it is for both candidates and teams involved. Having to do everything over Zoom through the first two weeks only seems to serve to save owners money, because they were the ones traveling to interview playoff teams’ coaches. It wasn’t the other way around. It’s left a lot of teams scrambling for assistants, and assistants scrambling for jobs at a later point in the calendar, which really helps no one.
We’ll see if it gets adjusted again.