Sickened By a League He's Too Good For, Bill Belichick Plans to Make the NFL Jealous
A Too Deep Zone guest columnist with lots of insider connections explains why Bill Belichick is better and smarter than the league which shunned him.
(Too Deep Zone asked guest columnist Stosh Widdershins to use his copious inside sources around the NFL to contextualize the Bill Belichick hire by University of North Carolina. Here is what he wrote. I did not do anything journalistic like challenge statements that sounded suspiciously self-serving to the subjects of the piece because that takes up a lot of time, and I desperately crave attention.)
They met on a sacred mountaintop each Sunday, these deposed sages of football wisdom. Belichick. Patricia. McDaniels. Lombardi. They trudged from sweat lodge to ice bath and back again, ritually purifying themselves before watching all of Sunday’s football games and sharing divine pigskin mysteries in a gnostic language mere mortals could never hope to decipher. They knew more about each team’s strengths and (especially) weaknesses than the teams themselves. They second-guessed each Sunday decision and mistake with infallible, mutually-congratulatory hindsight.
Yet no one in the NFL wanted to hire them for some reason. “Belichick and his disciples have transcended the NFL,” said one source uncomfortably close to the situation. “Bill knows it. Deep down, the NFL also knows it was no longer worthy of him, and it fills the league with collective self-loathing.”
Indeed, Belichick and his coven have become like the druids of ancient Gaul, and the myopic Roman generals around the league fears their mysterious powers. Teams interviewed Belichick, ostensibly for coaching or GM jobs, but they came away trembling and protective of their precious power structure.
“It’s all political,” said one source who I desperately need to keep answering my text messages. “Teams didn’t want a 72-year old who stopped listening to anyone beyond his inner circle five years ago to waltz into a team headquarters and replace the status quo with an autocratic cult of personality. I blame woke.”
The conspiracy against Belichick and his disciples runs deep, according to sources I didn’t bother pushing back against because they are extremely well connected and this material is just too juicy. Robert Kraft didn’t bend over backwards to give Belichick 100% credit for the Patriots success, the lecherous old scoundrel. Falcons owner Arthur Blank listened to top lieutenants who feared losing their jobs instead of handing imperial power over to someone who loudly (and rightfully) signaled that he believed his track record of success made him immune to accountability. The recently-vacated Bears coaching job looked appealing to Team Belichick, but the McCaskey family, once proud stewards of the game, foolishly chose Caleb Williams’ development over the traditional 20th century values they are supposed to uphold.
“If Belichick took over the Bears, Patricia would be screaming in one of Caleb’s ears and I – oops, I mean that handsome McDaniels guy – would be screaming in the other,” a completely anonymous source said. “Maybe with Bill O’Brien in the third. Caleb would straighten up and lose the nail polish or get shipped out of town on the first bus. Yet, for some ridiculous reason, the Bears didn’t even set up an interview.”
Belichick and his inner circle even created a 2,300-page document on how they would run a football organization. Originally titled Project 2025, it was renamed Project We Know More Than You to avoid confusion with a political document they also highly respected. Belichick planned to hand the document to potential employers and tell them it was The Bible: not one jot nor titter could be changed if they wanted his services. Unfortunately, all of my sources agree, the NFL just lacks both faith and vision these days.
“These teams are not professionally run,” one source said. “One of them has the owner’s son running the analytics department when not goofing off with his wrestling buddies!”
“Yeah, nepotism is gross,” said another source identified only as Little Stephen.
“I don’t recognize the NFL anymore,” said a third source. “It used to be: you rode the coattails of a defensive head coach to a nominal coordinator job; you parlayed that to a head coaching job, failed spectacularly and tail-tucked back to your mentor; he handed you a scouting director job and then an offensive coordinator role you had zero qualifications for; you failed spectacularly at that but parlayed every connection you had to get a consultant job with a Super Bowl team, then backstabbed their coordinator and tore the locker room in half; and then you just waltzed into another coordinator job like the drunk who caused the 20-car pileup.
“But now, I guess it’s not what you know but who you know.”
The University of North Carolina eventually read Belichick’s visionary manifesto and outbid Villanova, Butler and Gonzaga for the right to genuflect before football royalty. As for Belichick, he saw something at Chapel Hill that he no longer saw in the NFL or at college football programs people actually pay attention to: an opportunity, not just to work again and give his loyalists no-questions-asked sinecures but … actually, that’s it. That’s the sum total of the UNC job’s appeal.
“Bill wasn’t going to wait around for the NFL to realize how much it needs him,” a source told me. “Soon, all 32 teams will realize that none of them know how to win a Super Bowl anymore. They’ll call him in the middle of the night and beg him, ‘oh please, send us anyone, even Joe Judge, that we might restore some luster to our tarnished shield.’ And Bill will scoff, hang up the phone, and skip merrily off to the home of some four-star recruit to kiss his dad’s ass to keep the kid from committing to Clemson.”
If Belichick sounds like a jilted divorcee earholing you over umpteen beers with his version of why a marriage went sour, then you are just a hater. Make no mistake: Belichick has seized control of his career. He’s the one calling the shots. He’s still big. It’s just the NFL that has grown smaller.
(Widdershins’ book Tom Brady is Yucky-Poo, and other 100% Objective Observations goes on sale in March.)
Wait, there's no such person as Stosh Widdershins. There's no such person at all!!
I'm still dying laughing at this. Only thing that could make it better would be some quote from Like Mombardi that tries to make a catchphrase from six different Goodfellas references.