You can hear the disgust in Bill Belichick’s voice when he has to say the name of the NFL team he took such pleasure in beating.
In the 2018 ESPN “30 for 30” documentary “The Two Bills,” producers tried to get Belichick and his mentor Bill Parcells to head into the New York Jets locker room at MetLife Stadium. You know, for old times’ sake considering Belichick’s brief tenure as coach there in early 2000, one that ended with a simple message scribbled out on a napkin, that he was resigning as “HC of the NYJ.” He is a man of few words — even when quitting a position he held for only one day.
Belichick and Parcells wanting NOTHING to do with the Jets locker room is the best part of this doc pic.twitter.com/huu6vsVyVe
— Steve Perrault (@Steve_Perrault) February 2, 2018
He left amid turmoil within the Jets ownership group because of concerns with Woody Johnson and the other potential owner, he said in the documentary, bolting for the head-coaching job with the rival New England Patriots. And thus began what can generously be called Belichick’s distaste for the Jets, one that has carried on for 25 years and shown no signs of changing anytime soon.
That’s important context to remember now as the Jets have a head-coaching vacancy after Tuesday’s surprise firing of Robert Saleh. New York defensive coordinator Jeff Ulbrich has been named the interim coach for the rest of the 2024 season.
Meanwhile, having parted ways with the Patriots in January after 266 wins and six Super Bowl titles, Belichick awaits — he hopes — his next coaching job, one that’ll get him the 15 remaining wins he needs to become the league’s all-time leader in coaching wins, a record he badly wants to claim.
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It might be easy to link the 72-year-old coach and the Jets in the coming months for obvious reasons and the drama it would provide. Could you imagine? Belichick in New York with a good roster in win-now mode and a quarterback in Aaron Rodgers he has frequently praised? In the same division as the Patriots, no less, with a chance to get back at his old team? Broadway would have nothing on the theater in the Meadowlands!
But that’s likely little more than fantasy. Why?
Belichick is one of the league’s great grudge-holders. He was close friends with coach Eric Mangini until he bolted for the Jets and became the person largely responsible for the Spygate scandal.
Belichick grew up in Annapolis, Md., the son of a football coach, a student of the game and a purveyor of its history. He used to talk about his respect for Don Shula, the legendary NFL coach, whom he grew up watching with the Baltimore Colts. After Spygate, Shula said the controversy “tainted” what the Patriots had built. Belichick didn’t like that, so he now wants Shula’s all-time wins record.
Want more? Belichick also helped Wes Welker become one of the league’s best wide receivers between 2007 and 2012. Still, after a contract dispute went public, Welker left the team and was essentially scrubbed from Patriots history. Though Welker is the franchise’s all-time leader in receptions and ranks third in receiving yards, he’s not in the franchise’s Hall of Fame. There are no photos of Welker on the walls of Gillette Stadium, though plenty of his teammates appear in shots from that time. And though he’s now an assistant coach with the Miami Dolphins — which means two games a year against the Patriots — he and Belichick were never spotted catching up before or after games as many former colleagues do.
But back to the Jets.
They have what should be a good roster. Belichick loves Rodgers, even if the 40-year-old’s play has declined a bit. And massive paychecks have a way of helping people bury hatchets.
But for this to work, for Belichick to truly consider the Jets, one of the biggest grudge-holders the NFL has ever seen would have to let go of bitterness more than two decades in the making. And that’s assuming Johnson would even consider Belichick after their tumultuous past. The Jets owner seems like a proud man. He is apparently insisting the Jets refer to him as “Ambassador Johnson” on their website because of his time as ambassador to the United Kingdom from 2017 to 2021.
All of that makes it seem unlikely Belichick and Johnson would link up, even if it would make for a fascinating fit.
What seems like a better fit — with nearly as much drama — would be the Jets’ pursuing Mike Vrabel, a Patriots Hall of Fame player under Belichick. After six largely successful seasons as the coach of the Tennessee Titans, Vrabel was reportedly interested in coaching the Patriots but never got so much as an interview for the job when owner Robert Kraft quickly hired Jerod Mayo, who he’d put in writing would succeed Belichick.
Of course, there’s a lot more to the history of Belichick and the Jets. The coach once called resigning from the Jets “one of the greatest moments of my career.” He took pride in beating them 15 straight times from 2016 to 2023, an unfathomably long winning streak in a league full of parity. He smirked on the sideline in 2019 when, during another blowout win over the Jets, he exploited a loophole in the rules to drain two minutes off the clock without running a play while the Jets looked on befuddled.
Even all these years later, Belichick still seems to be trolling the Jets. Just two weeks ago, while on his weekly appearance with ESPN’s Pat McAfee, Belichick was talking about the Minnesota Vikings and quarterback Sam Darnold, whom the Jets drafted with the No. 3 pick in 2018 but has struggled in his first six seasons in the NFL. “I’ll say this,” Belichick added coyly. “Everybody has liked Darnold — except the Jets.”
All of that will do little to slow speculation about Belichick and the Jets. Any time a coaching job opens, it’ll probably yield discussions about whether Belichick will be a fit there.
But this doesn’t seem like the right one for either side.
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(Photo of Aaron Rodgers and Bill Belichick: Billie Weiss / Getty Images)