LOOK WHO’S CHATTY: BILL BELICHICK, BREAKOUT STAR OF THE NFL DRAFT

Ahoy, Grumpy!

There he was, Thursday night in Detroit, trading the scissored-up hoodie for a snazzy suit and a pink tie: Bill Belichick, aka the Grumpy Lobster Boat Captain, the most successful NFL head coach ever, now underemployed and moonlighting as a talking head at the NFL draft.

As late pivots go, it was jarring. Here was one of the most relentless mediaphobes in sports, embedded across enemy lines, smiling, laughing, yapping on about ball security and best availables with ESPN Dude King Pat McAfee as he nitpicked the night’s most glamorous prospects.

“There’s no cakewalk in the NFL, I don’t care what position you play,” Belichick warned. “It’s a tough climb.”

Who was this septuagenarian skeptic seducing the camera? Was Draft Night Belichick for real, or a deepfake?

Belichick had shown TV charm before—there was that NFL 100 tribute series in which he effused over pre-WWII leatherheads and Ravens safety Ed Reed and came off as a cranky uncle gone mellow.

Once in a while, a reporter might get Belichick going at the Foxborough podium on football arcana like left-footed punters or long snappers, but the coach mostly treated media chit-chat with disdain, grunting through press conferences with nonanswers and hilariously curt changes of subject (“We’re on to Cincinnati.”)

Affable, he was rarely. But after parting ways with the New England Patriots and failing to land a new head coaching job (more on that in a minute), Belichick was without a draft room to prowl for the first time in nearly five decades.

Instead, he joined McAfee’s “Pat McAfee’s Draft Spectacular” a streaming draft night spinoff starring the former NFL punter turned media kingpin and on-air therapist to Aaron Rodgers. On a screwball panel which featured a Mel Kiper Jr. impersonator, Belichick, sometimes talking as if he was on an entirely separate show, offered genuine nuggets of wisdom amid delightfully candid critiques.

He was noticeably cool on all three of the draft’s top quarterback prospects—Caleb Williams, Jayden Daniels and Drake Maye—using film to pick away at their errant throws and sloppy decision-making. He winced at Williams’s “poor mechanics.” He expressed alarm at Daniels’s turnovers. Maye’s footwork needed “a lot of work.”

He didn’t say they were bad draft picks or that they should have been taken lower. He raved about their individual talents. But he was blunt: they all had to get a lot better.

Belichick’s refreshing critiques made clear what a positivity pageant the modern draft has become. He didn’t get the memo. It got especially juicy when the Patriots selected Maye, out of North Carolina, the franchise’s biggest decision since parting ways with its former coach.

Would Belichick be diplomatic toward his ex-employer?

Uhhhhh…

“Drake compares himself a lot to Josh Allen,” Belichick said, referring to the Bills All-Pro. “He’s been doing that for quite a while. We’ll see about that.”

We’ll see about that. It was like listening to an in-law snort at your new car. “A very talented kid, good size, runs well, has a good arm,” Belichick said. He liked a lot about him. “Just…he hasn’t played very much. He doesn’t have a lot of experience.”

McAfee wisely knew his show had a breakout star, and he cleared the deck for More Bill. Within an hour, the rest of the panel had all but evaporated into the Motown night. Even when Rodgers showed up via Zoom, he delivered flowers to the New England legend. “Bill, I don’t want to embarrass you, but you are the GOAT,” he said.

Belichick has taken a bit of a thrashing since the Patriots break-up—the awkward farewell with owner Robert Kraft; the Apple documentary in which Belichick sat like a hostile witness; an unsuccessful courtship with the Atlanta Falcons, who wound up making the oddest choice of draft night, using the No. 8 pick to draft QB Michael Penix Jr. after signing veteran Kirk Cousins to a four-year $180 million deal.

A narrative has grown around Belichick, of an ornery coach not worth the trouble, peerless in accomplishment but perhaps out of sync with the modern game. Fairly or not, that’s what happens in football, to draft prospects and old coaches—the story line takes over.

So Belichick now joins the storytellers. The Athletic reported he is closing in on a deal with Omaha Productions, a media shop launched by a pair of Patriots tormentors, Eli and Peyton Manning. He doesn’t appear headed for the traditional gasbag slot on a Sunday broadcast show, though that could change. He may simply tread water until another coaching job appears. He will do it his way, as always. He is Bill Belichick, as seen on TV.

Write to Jason Gay at [email protected]

2024-04-26T09:43:53Z dg43tfdfdgfd