Bill Belichick predicted to make bold move to struggling NFL team

It's safe to say the Bill Belichick experiment has not worked out in college football, and now the NFL coaching legend has been projected to make a move back to the league.

Is a return to the NFL in the making for Bill Belichick? One former columnist thinks there might be an in. | Bob Donnan-Imagn Images

Bill Belichick has not seen the success that he was hoping for in his first job as a college football coach, prompting questions around whether he would consider leaving his current post at North Carolina and make a comeback in the pros at some point.

Belichick has repeatedly denied any interest in doing that, but a long-time sportswriter thinks one team could possibly lure him back to the league, and one that just fired its head coach: the New York Giants.

He would go ‘in a second’

“I think Belichick would do it in a second,” veteran NFL columnist and author Gary Myers said recently on the Valentine’s Views podcast.

Belichick is widely considered the most accomplished head coach in NFL history, winning six Super Bowl championships with the New England Patriots, and two more rings as the defensive coordinator of the Giants.

But he’s still 13 wins behind Don Shula as the second-winningest NFL head coach of all time. Belichick won 333 games to Shula’s 347, and that could be inspiration enough for him to plausibly consider a return to the league.

“I know that’s important to him, although he’ll never admit that,” Myers added.

“I also know it’s important to him to win a Super Bowl without Brady. I think it’s something Belichick very much wants to do.”

‘He loves the Giants’

There’s also what Myers describes as a strong emotional connection that he believes Belichick has with the Giants.

“He loves the Giants. I mean he loves the Giants. He gets emotional and melancholy reminiscing about his Giant years. Although that was a long time ago, the Giants have stolen his heart.”

Is it plausible?

The question naturally arises, is such a move possible? Or even desirable?

Right now, Belichick is busy leading the North Carolina football program, which is suddenly on a two-game win streak after starting 2-5, with wins against Syracuse and Stanford, moving two games away from becoming bowl eligible.

But the miserable first impression that Belichick had at the school left critics arguing that neither he nor his staff were really good fits in college football.

And it helped inspire more than a few viral rumors that brass at North Carolina was privately discussing an exit strategy from Belichick.

Belichick, who turns 74 in April, is still in the first year of a five-year, $50 million contract that is fully guaranteed for the first three years, but he can execute a buyout for just $1 million if he wants to make a comeback in the league.

The idea that North Carolina would part with him seems far-fetched, given it would owe him $30 million over the next three years if they pulled the plug, meaning it would have to be Belichick who made the move.

But would the Giants be a good fit?

Three straight 2-7 starts, a 20-40-1 overall record, and a poorly-performing defense helped get Brian Daboll fired. But there’s also Jaxson Dart.

The rookie quarterback has occasionally lit a fire under the Giants’ offense, and the idea of having the man who coached Tom Brady being there to help develop him further is an intriguing one.

But Belichick’s post-Brady performance left much to be desired, especially after the failure of installing Mac Jones as the successor at the position.

There’s also the question of just how much authority Belichick would want over the organization, something he’s accustomed to getting, and it’s not a given that the Giants would hand over basically the entire decision-making apparatus to him.

More likely would be a situation in which Belichick would willingly hand over more power to a general manager, in this case Joe Schoen, to assess and acquire talent.

At this point, it’s all speculation. The Giants are at a crossroads, and could be in a place to show genuine interest in Belichick. But given how he’s performed at North Carolina, that interest may be waning.