AFC Notes: Bill Belichick, Jerod Mayo, Bills, Jets, Patriots

Bill Belichick

• According to ESPN’s Seth Wickersham, former Patriots HC Bill Belichick and the think tank of friends and former associates helping him this past season had settled on the Bears as the most attractive landing spot. But the group thought it was unlikely Chicago would choose Belichick over going after a coach with a background on offense. 
• Wickersham added there wasn’t a lot of backchannel communication between Belichick’s camp and any NFL owners, including Jaguars owner Shad Khan who’s believed to be heavily weighing a coaching change. 
• According to the Athletic’s Jeff Howe, one of either the Bears, Jets or Saints had already ruled out the idea of interviewing Belichick, and sources from a few other teams with potential vacancies didn’t think there would be enough momentum in their building to hire him.  
• “(Belichick) burned a lot of bridges over his career,” a high-ranking team executive told Howe. Another longtime executive from a team involved in last year’s hiring cycle said, “There might be some owners who want (Belichick’s) structure and stability, but he is 72. I think a lot of teams want to build something long-term, and he clearly has a capped timeline.”
• Wickersham writes that former Browns GM Michael Lombardi, who is a member of the think tank and who will follow him to North Carolina as the program GM, took shots on his podcast at Tony Khan and his influence with the Jaguars’ analytics department that Lombardi thought was emblematic of the current problems in the NFL. So that bridge may have been burned already. 
• Belichick’s feelings toward the NFL have shifted over the past year, per Wickersham, with his experience at the end of his time in New England and being passed over by the Falcons and other teams last year leaving him “disgusted.” One confidante said: “Listening to [Falcons GM Terry] Fontenot discuss drafting systems last January, as if he knew it all, bothered him.”
• Wickersham notes Belichick knew he’d have to compromise his model to get another NFL job, and while getting the all-time NFL wins record was important to him, it didn’t matter more than being able to coach. That led to him considering a move to college coaching a few months ago. 
• One source explained Belichick’s thought process to Wickersham: “I’ll go be the highest draw in college football, and will have the greatest coach in the ACC, instead of you guys who don’t want me anymore because there are people who don’t deserve to be empowered. … Everyone is running away from college football. I think Bill thinks this landscape is better for him. … More transactional and less relational. In his mind, this is better for me.”
• Ollie Connolly says a former NFL coach who will join Belichick in Chapel Hill texted him early in the college football season asking if he’d read Rough Magic, a book about Hall of Fame coach Steve Walsh‘s failed stint as the head coach at Stanford, indicating when Belichick possibly started considering the idea. 
• Per Howe, there were a lot of critiques from others around the NFL regarding how Belichick’s program started to deteriorate at the end of his time in New England, including how he coached and how he handled the front office side: “I think people would be concerned about the culture in the building. (Belichick’s) culture worked when they were winning, but he got fired because they weren’t winning.”
• One former player added, “It’s nice to go somewhere and not get told how much you suck every day.” Howe points out the way Belichick alienated QB Mac Jones turned off a lot of coaches and executives around the league. 
• Sports Illustrated’s Albert Breer says he thinks Belichick’s choosing North Carolina was less about not being able to get any head coaching job in the NFL and more about not being able to get the “right” one where he could still run his program without compromising too much. 
• Breer adds it helps that the differences between the college and pro games have shrunk in recent years, and Belichick thinks he might have an edge with his NFL background coming down to the lower level.
• Chris Low reports that Raiders’ interim OC Scott Turner could be someone who joins Belichick‘s staff.
• When asked if he could be lured back to the NFL, Belichick responded: “I didn’t come here to leave.” (Karen Guregian)
• Belichick’s five-year contract has three fully guaranteed years and two non-guaranteed. (Ralph D. Russo)
• Belichick can earn up to $3.5 million a year in bonuses based on rankings and postseason results. (Russo)

Bills

• Bills OT Spencer Brown was fined $11,255 for unnecessary roughness (facemask), and OT Dion Dawkins was fined $14,069 for unsportsmanlike conduct (removal of the helmet) in Week 14.

Jets

• New UNC HC Bill Belichick reached out to the Jets himself to show interest in their head coach opening, per Brian Costello.
• Jets DL Javon Kinlaw was fined $11,817 for unnecessary roughness in Week 14.

Patriots

• SI.com’s Albert Breer thinks “it’d have to be a disaster the rest of the way” for the Patriots to part ways with HC Jerod Mayo after one season. 
• According to Dianna Russini of The Athletic, Patriots owner Robert Kraft has “privately assured those close to him” that he plans to keep Mayo for a second season.