If he left on top, bet he would've gotten more bites:
As Falcons pass on Bill Belichick, it’s clear what is shutting him out of this NFL head-coaching hiring cycle
The Dallas Cowboys' job never opened. The Los Angeles Chargers' vacancy was never on the table. And the Atlanta Falcons chose to go another way. Now, with only two head-coaching jobs remaining across the league — the Washington Commanders and Seattle Seahawks — it’s looking more feasible than ever that the 2024 NFL hiring cycle could leave Bill Belichick behind.
The reasons? Time and power. Belichick has a short supply of one and continues to seek an abundance of the other.
That’s the takeaway from Belichick’s pair of meetings with the Falcons, which ultimately led team owner Arthur Blank to reconsider his quest to secure the heavy-hitting culture architect who also boasts a titanic résumé. Despite two meetings with Belichick — including a dinner late last week — the Falcons continued to scour and refine their list of candidates this week, igniting a belief in league and agent circles that the organization was seriously considering options beyond Belichick.
On Thursday, that suspicion was confirmed when Blank hired Los Angeles Rams defensive coordinator Raheem Morris, who previously held multiple positions on Atlanta’s staff from 2015 to 2020, including a stint as defensive coordinator and interim head coach following the firing of Dan Quinn in 2020.
The crossroads, according to a source familiar with the Falcons and Blank, was the element of realignment that would've needed to take place inside the Falcons to maximize a Belichick hire. While Blank and Belichick apparently never discussed a detailed plan of how a linear chain of command under the head coach would work, the source said meetings with Blank crystalized Belichick’s continued belief that the full scope of football operations, personnel and coaching should be under his decision-making umbrella.
But the Falcons, like virtually every other team in the NFL, have never entertained that type of CEO/coach power structure. Embracing it under Belichick would have raised the specter of either shuffling or redefining multiple jobs within the organization — if not rebooting some parts altogether.
