FOXBORO — Bill Belichick believes that he’ll get another chance to coach in the NFL in 2025. But with no job on the sideline this year, the former Patriots head coach is getting set to spend 2024 on television.
Included in ESPN’s lengthy article detailing Belichick’s unsuccessful attempt to get a new head-coaching job after his 24 years with the Patriots ended, there’s a tidbit about Belichick’s future on the airwaves. Once it was clear that he wasn’t going to land the Atlanta Falcons job, Belichick started interviewing agents to help get him on television.
According to ESPN, Belichick will be joining Peyton Manning’s Omaha Productions “in the coming weeks.” It was reported last month that Manning was pursuing Belichick for a role in his entertainment company, which is best known for producing the Manningcast on Monday Night Football.
Speculation that Belichick could join Manning and ESPN ramped up after Belichick’s good friend and legendary college coach Nick Saban signed with ESPN following his retirement from Alabama. While Peyton and Eli Manning run the Manningcast, fans would love a similar broadcast with Belichick and Saban where they could analyze the game or simply share tales of their many, many, many years on the sideline.
Whatever Belichick’s role ends up being with Omaha Productions, it could just be a stopgap for the 72-year-old. After all, Belichick remains a head coach at heart.
“He is believed to be biding his time until next January for openings on teams he has told confidants he would be interested in coaching: the Dallas Cowboys, Philadelphia Eagles and New York Giants,” ESPN wrote Wednesday. “A source who spoke with a longtime friend of Belichick said the friend wonders if the coach will have another opportunity: ‘I don’t think Bill Belichick will ever be a head coach again in the National Football League,’ the friend said. ‘Unless it’s [for] Jerry Jones.'”
Belichick to the Cowboys was the hot rumor throughout the 2024 season, even when Belichick was still employed by the Patriots. It got even hotter after the Cowboys failed to win a playoff game.
Jones ended that speculation when he announced that Mike McCarthy would be back for the final year of his contract in 2024. But ESPN reported Wednesday that “Belichick told a friend that he liked the idea of sticking it to the Krafts by working for Jones,” and if the Cowboys have a down year, those rumors will fire up again in 2025.
Until then, it sounds like Belichick will be brining his talents to televisions everywhere in 2024.