Boomer Esiason Claims Bill Belichick Turned Down Falcons Job Offer
Former NFL quarterback Boomer Esiason dropped a shocking piece of intel about Bill Belichick’s job hunt this past offseason.
Belichick, who was heavily rumored to be the Atlanta Falcons’ top head coaching candidate after parting ways with the New England Patriots, ultimately was passed over in this year's head coach hiring cycle. According to Boomer Esiason’s sources, however, Belichick received an offer from the Falcons at one point but turned it down.
“I was told yesterday, and I do believe it from the source that I got it from, that supposedly [Falcons owner] Arthur Blank was bought in to Bill Belichick and could have offered him the job,” Esiason said on Boomer and Gio on Monday. “I don’t know why guys say no, but an NFL executive basically told me that they believe that Arthur Blank offered Bill the job.
“Now, there may have been some caveats to that offer, you never know, it’s never, ‘OK Bill, I want you, here’s a five-year contract, you do whatever you want.’ I don’t think it was one of those.”
The Falcons ended up hiring former Los Angeles Rams defensive coordinator Raheem Morris to replace Arthur Smith, who was fired at the end of the 2023 season.
Despite Belichick’s storied track record of success, some speculated that the 71-year-old Belichick wasn’t considered a long-term solution for rebuilding franchises.
Esiason elaborated on why Belichick, who was coming off a 24-year stint in Foxborough, may have rejected the Falcons job, noting that the ex-Patriots coach may have simply “thought better of it.”
“Maybe he said, ‘You know what? I don’t want to go right back in. I want a year away. I want to see what happens,’” continued Esiason. “Because as we know, there will be about five or six job openings next year, and there may be a better situation where an owner says, ‘You know what? I wanna go down this path with you and I want you to take my building over and I want you to run it the way that you ran it with the New England Patriots.'”
Regardless of who rejected who, Belichick joins Mike Vrabel and Pete Carroll in a select group of venerable coaching stalwarts who will not have a head coaching job in the 2024 NFL season.
