On its surface, it seems that a marriage — or at least a short-term engagement — between Bill Belichick and Jerry Jones is on an NFL collision course. Jones has not reacted to the Dallas Cowboys' stunning home loss in the Wild Card Round to the Green Bay Packers by firing Mike McCarthy yet, but it seems like it would be impossible to come to any other conclusion.
It was one thing to lose to the Packers, but it was quite another to get blown out at home. This game was not as close as the final score of 48-32 indicates. The Cowboys got handled by the No. 7 seed in the NFC Playoffs from the start, and it indicates they were unprepared for their opponent.
Even if Jones wanted to give McCarthy the benefit of the doubt because his team has won 12 games three seasons in a row, his team had a 4-5 record on the road this year. One of those losses was by double digits to the Arizona Cardinals — one of the worst teams in the NFL. The Cowboys were unprepared in that game and also blown out on the road by the San Francisco 49ers and Buffalo Bills.
Most NFL observers looked at the Cowboys as no worse than the third-most talented team in the NFL at the start of the year behind the Niners and Kansas City Chiefs. Yet, there was no progress during the season despite the presence of Dak Prescott, CeeDee Lamb, Micah Parsons and Stephon Gilmore, and much of this lands on McCarthy.
Communication style would be issue for Bill Belichick
Which brings us to Bill Belichick. There is no way the Cowboys would come out for a playoff game the way they did under McCarthy if the Hoodie was the boss. Belichick’s defensive game plan would take away whatever he thought was the opponent’s best asset, and his team would not get blown out at home.
Belichick is a football lifer who has lived and breathed the game since childhood — his father Steve Belichick was a longtime college coach who spent 34 years at Navy — and seemingly wants to go back on the sidelines even though his time with the Patriots is over.
But he is still a 71-year-old man who is completely set in his ways. Going from New England to Dallas would not be an easy transition, and it would not necessarily be overly pleasant for Jones.
Belichick knows how to play the game during the hiring process and would certainly be smiling at the introductory press conference when seated next to Jones. But once he is working and on the job, he is not the type to make small talk with the owner and keep him apprised of what’s going on his mind or with the actions he takes in getting his team ready or in the postmortems after each game.
To those that point out that Bill Parcells worked harmoniously with Jones during his four years in Dallas between 2003 and 2006, he is a far different animal than Belichick with a far more robust personality. While Parcells was not afraid to speak his mind with Jones, he didn’t hesitate to communicate with him.
Best spot for Bill Belichick add to NFL victory total
That’s not Bill Belichick, who would rebuff Patriots owner Robert Kraft while the team was in the regular season. He is not the type to explain things in the hallway to the boss –- let alone get called to the office — as the season marches on.
“That’s the part that would be the most difficult for Jerry,” said one former NFL coach. “He has his fingers in everything the Cowboys do and he would have to take two or three steps backwards. Would Belichick bring better results? Almost certainly, but it would be difficult for those two to get along.”
Belichick (302 coaching victories) wants to become the winningest coach in NFL history and is chasing Don Shula (328 victories). There is no place in the NFL he could go where he would have the ability to stack wins and make a charge at Shula than Dallas.
But he only knows one way of doing business, and that’s by taking charge of all areas, including personnel and in-game decisions. That is not going to change, and that’s what would make this a dangerous relationship from its earliest stages.
Patriots follow questionable NFL path by hiring Jerod Mayo before a GM
Kraft wasted no time in hiring Jerod Mayo to become the New England head coach after parting company with Bill Belichick.
He avoided the long interview process – known as the Rooney Rule — that includes bringing in multiple candidates. The owner had a previous agreement with Mayo about the head coaching position .
That’s fine, but Kraft is about to find out what multiple other teams already know: there’s a built-in conflict when a general manager does not get to hire his own head coach.
The two men must confer and work well together on all personnel decisions. When they disagree, the general manager gets the final say. But when he has had no say in the hiring of the head coach, the lines of demarcation grow blurry.
However, there are indications that the Patriots are not going forward in any kind of traditional manner. They have a player personnel director in Matt Gelb and a scouting director in Eliot Wolf. It appears that those two men will work with Mayo on key personnel decisions.
Management plan is questionable
This cannot possibly work over the long haul. An effort can be made to paint it as a superior way to do business, and a majority of two of the three will likely start out being decisive on personnel decisions. However, these choices do not come without emotion or argumentation.
One man may be far more knowledgeable about the situation than the other two. One man may become resentful if he is not listened to.
Strong opinions may carry more weight during the decision-making process, but that doesn’t mean they will be accurate.
Problems often crop up in the strongest partnerships, but when it’s a three-man majority rules situation, it appears to be problematic — bordering on disastrous — right from the start.
Eagles' finish was brutal
The Eagles completed a brutal late-season collapse as they fell apart in a 32-9 Wild Card loss to the Buccaneers. The Eagles lost six of their last seven games, and the effort against Tampa Bay was not great.
Head coach Nick Sirianni has gone from favorite for Coach of the Year to potential fired coach in the blink of an eye, but he should not be dismissed by his employers.
There are reasons for the collapse, including the injured finger of Jalen Hurts and the knee injury to star wide out A.J. Brown. However, Sirianni has to go beyond that when talking to management.
Sirianni is not charismatic or a great talker. But he has to have an idea beyond the injuries if he is to remain an effective coach.
Remember, he was brilliant in 2022 and for three quarters of the 2023 season before disaster hit.
Mike Tomlin's Steelers future
Mike Tomlin is coming back as the Steelers head coach in 2024 after there was quite a bit of speculation throughout the last month about his status. In many ways, he did a superior job of coaching in 2023 even though the team had substandard quarterback play until the end of the season.
Kenny Pickett got off to a tough start as former offensive coordinator Matt Canada did not give him any kind of positive game plan to work with. After Pickett was injured, Mitch Trubisky was the land mine at quarterback he has been throughout the majority of his career and Canada was dismissed. The desperate Steelers turned to Mason Rudolph after that and won the final three games of the regular season to make the playoffs.
The belief here is that another head coach would have seen his team get buried early on. That did not happen to the Steelers (10-7) with Tomlin at the helm.
Tomlin has been the Steelers’ coach for 17 seasons, and he has the longest tenure of any coach in the NFL. He has a 173-100-2 record in Pittsburgh and led the Steelers to a Super Bowl win in 2009.
He has not won a playoff game since 2017, but he is a major asset for the Steelers, and they could return to championship status if they can find a steady quarterback in 2024.
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