Bill Belichick is a finalist for the Pro Football Hall of Fame. Another coach who\u2019s laying the foundation for a bronze bust of his own hopes Belichick will return to pro football.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ll be honest with you, I miss him not being in the league,\u201d Broncos coach Sean Payton told reporters on Wednesday. \u201cI miss him not being in the league, and I wouldn\u2019t be surprised, and I would be somewhat hopeful that he ends up back in the league. We\u2019d all be better for it. He\u2019s something.\u201d<\/p>\n
Belichick\u2019s buyout costs a miniscule, for NFL owners, $1 million. But there\u2019s no clear indication that anyone would want to hire him, given the latter years of his time in New England (which included putting a defensive coach in charge of the offense), the pettiness he and his consigliere, Mike Lombardi, have displayed toward the Patriots specifically and the NFL generally, his 2025 performance at North Carolina, the baggage and distractions he\u2019d bring with him in a return to the pro game, and his reputation for hoping to take over the entire football operation in lieu of simply coaching the team.<\/p>\n
Belichick should have a no-debate, no-brainer case for Canton. He should automatically gain entry. He\u2019s one of the greatest coaches in NFL history. Failure to put him in immediately would undermine the credibility of the entire selection process.<\/p>\n
That doesn\u2019t mean Belichick currently is a viable candidate to become an NFL head coach.<\/p>\n
Still, 31 teams can say \u201cno way.\u201d It only takes one to whisper, \u201cWhy not?\u201d<\/p>\n
The college game clearly isn\u2019t for Belichick. For plenty of pro teams that haven\u2019t won many games in recent years, they could do a lot worse than Belichick. And they have.<\/p>\n
It nevertheless feels like an uphill climb. Which creates an interesting irony. It will be much easier for Belichick to gain a spot among the all-time immortals than it will be for him to get another opportunity to coach one of the NFL\u2019s franchises.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Bill Belichick is a finalist for the Pro Football Hall of Fame. Another coach who\u2019s laying the foundation…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":324093,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[436],"tags":[49,48,514,82],"class_list":{"0":"post-324092","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-nfl","8":"tag-ca","9":"tag-canada","10":"tag-nfl","11":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/324092","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=324092"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/324092\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/324093"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=324092"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=324092"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=324092"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}