With Bill Belichick at the Center, the NFL Coaching Carousel Is About to Begin

Robert Kraft has a big decision on his hands in New England. Plus, what’s next for the longtime Patriots coach, Jim Harbaugh’s unfinished business in the NFL and more in Albert Breer’s Friday news and notes.

The coaching carousel is about to start spinning. So for this week, the Tip Sheet is going to spin right alongside with it …

• A lot of eyes will be on Foxborough on Monday, and rightfully so: For the first time in a quarter century, New England Patriots owner Robert Kraft will end the season with a decision to make on his head coach, one who happens to be the greatest coach in the game’s history.

If Kraft were to move on from Belichick, New England’s front office would need drastic reshaping.  :: Eric Canha/USA TODAY Sports

Some within the team feel like the hay has been on the barn for a while with this one, going back to the team’s trip to Germany in early November. And the report from ESPN’s Mike Reiss, who said Thursday that Kraft and Bill Belichick have not yet met on the coach’s future, would bolster that idea. Assuming some change is coming, if there was a good chance the change wouldn’t include Belichick, it’s fair to deduce the owner would start dialogue with his head coach well before the season finale and the start of the hiring cycle.

If Belichick is gone, linebackers coach Jerod Mayo is at the front of the line to replace him. Last year, discussions with Kraft led to Mayo turning down a chance to interview for the Carolina Panthers job, and a lucrative contract extension that dovetails with Belichick’s (both deals are through 2024). There’s also been speculation in league circles that Kraft could at least make a phone call to the Tennessee Titans on Mike Vrabel (remember, he got his last coach via trade).

Then there’s also the matter of how Kraft would reshape the front office around a new coach.

Kraft has never had a general manager by title, so hiring one would be a first, and there are plenty of Patriots alumni out there (former Atlanta Falcons GM Thomas Dimitroff, former Titans GM Jon Robinson, former Detroit Lions GM Bob Quinn, former Las Vegas Raiders GM Dave Ziegler, San Francisco 49ers assistant GM Adam Peters, Cincinnati Bengals exec Trey Brown) that are worth a look, along with a few guys who are related by extension (Kansas City Chiefs assistant GM Mike Borgonzi came up under Scott Pioli) and some qualified in-house candidates (former Green Bay Packers and Cleveland Browns exec Eliot Wolf is their director of scouting).

And it probably won’t, and shouldn’t, just end there. Ushering in a new era will likely also mean reorganizing the team’s football operations, which has featured an insular environment that has served the Patriots well for a long time but is a small staff by NFL standards in 2024.

“If you hired somebody from Philly there, they’d look at it like, This is Mars. Where is all the stuff? Where are the people? We don’t have this, we don’t have that …” said one source. “That’s the most interesting one. It’s easy to blame all that stuff on Bill, but you can’t blame all of it on Bill.”

And obviously, it sure looks like it’ll be on someone other than Bill to adjust the team’s setup for the times.

• So where does Belichick go? Some people think he’ll have a choice of a few jobs. Others think he could be shut out.

I’d guess that whatever happens next week, it won’t catch Belichick by surprise.

These things can be backchanneled, and Belichick’s been around for a long time, and has been involved in these sorts of things in the past. So it’d be surprising if he didn’t have a feel for the landscape before next week. What’d also be surprising is if there’s an absolute land rush for his services, and that’s no affront to him.

His situation is a bit like his old quarterback’s was four years ago. Tom Brady had only two real suitors at the end (Tampa Bay Buccaneers, Los Angeles Chargers), and the reason why is that you had to check a lot of boxes—from money to roster makeup to geography to comfort level with an existing setup—to truly be in the running. It’s going to be similar with Belichick. A team facing a massive rebuild probably isn’t hiring a 71-year-old coach. And a 71-year-old probably wouldn’t be all that keen on embarking on some sort of five-year plan.

The Chargers make the most football sense. The Panthers and Dallas Cowboys might have the owners motivated to take a swing. The Raiders have some connection there, too (Mark Davis’s dad almost hired Belichick in 1999), but it’s hard to see them going back to the Patriots well. Which, of course, illustrates how the list of suitors, if Belichick’s out in New England and determined to coach elsewhere, probably won’t be very long.

It’s been a busy season for Harbaugh, who served two separate suspensions, saw his program under investigation for sign stealing and is now preparing to coach for a national championship.  :: Kirby Lee/USA TODAY Sports

• The next biggest figure on the market will be Michigan’s Jim Harbaugh, and I think Harbaugh and the school will try to find closure quickly, one way or the other.

I haven’t talked to anyone who doesn’t believe Harbaugh is seriously considering taking his second shot at coaching in the NFL now, with the Chargers and Raiders setting up as logical landing spots—the former because it’s California, it’s Justin Herbert and it’s a turnkey roster, and the latter because Harbaugh cut his coaching teeth with the team, and Davis tried to hire him when he wound up going to Michigan in 2015.

It also seems like the news of terms Michigan’s offer to stay gave NFL teams a baseline for what it’ll cost to lure him, and maybe signaled that he’s ready to roll. Add that to the likelihood of heavy NCAA sanctions coming down the pike for Harbaugh and the Michigan program, as well as 44 seniors out the door, and it seems like this is the time for Harbaugh to deal with unfinished business he has left in the league.

• One thing I’ve heard from a number of folks is that Davis will likely take a big swing or two, and if he doesn’t connect, interim coach Antonio Pierce would become the favorite for the job.

Maybe that’s Harbaugh. Maybe it’s Belichick. If it’s Pierce, there really are two things I see behind it, beyond just the potential he’s shown in his short run in charge. One is that Davis did have some regret in not allowing Rich Bisaccia another run in 2022, after Bisaccia galvanized the organization as interim coach in ’21. The other is that Pierce has the support of the locker room, and Davis certainly listens to voices there.

In particular, Maxx Crosby, Josh Jacobs and Davante Adams have been leaders who have Davis’s ear, going back to before Josh McDaniels and Ziegler were fired. I believe all three of those guys would firmly back the full-time hiring of Pierce.

• I’d be surprised if new Washington Commanders owner Josh Harris goes in on Belichick or Harbaugh, and that’s because a lot of his work has been done looking at NFL models, rather than just individuals, should he look to reshape his franchise as expected.

I don’t know whether he’s settled on a model yet, but I have heard he’s intrigued by the Baltimore Ravens and Philadelphia Eagles, and how they’ve built their football operations out. But the fall hire of Eugene Shen, who started as an NFL analytics guy working for John Harbaugh, is at least one sign of which way that might go, and one that could lead Washington looking at guys like Ravens director of player personnel Joe Hortiz or defensive coordinator Mike Macdonald.

At any rate, I’d expect a relatively wide-open search, and one that reflects, as one person with knowledge of the situation put it, “This ain’t basketball.” (In other words, this won’t be a football reboot on what the Philadelphia Sixers or New Jersey Devils have done under Harris’s stewardship.)

• A lot of folks internally in Carolina think that owner David Tepper will hand Lions OC Ben Johnson a blank check, but I’m not totally convinced. One thing I’ve heard is that Tepper will be looking to check 10 boxes, rather than one, this time around. And so he may still go hard after Johnson, but it probably won’t be for the same reasons he did a year ago.

Tepper does have a decision to make on GM Scott Fitterer, whom I’ve heard he likes a lot personally, but probably has an uphill climb to stick through all the changes.

As for Johnson, well, he’ll have suitors. Is the perfect job out there? If not, wouldn’t it be worth it for the Lions to give him another raise, to give him something that’d prompt him not to settle on a count of “it’s one of 32”? I think it would be, and I wouldn’t rule out the idea that Detroit does that.

• I do believe that the Chicago Bears will bring back GM Ryan Poles and coach Matt Eberflus.

That said, I’ve also heard those guys haven’t yet been given full assurances of such from ownership, and president Kevin Warren has understandably gone underground on this particular topic. So, yes, chances are they’ll be back, and that’d be justified. We’ll see when the final word comes.

• A lot of eyes have been on the three teams still alive in the AFC South, and the strange thing is that the team that controls its own destiny this weekend, the Buccaneers, is the one discussed with the most uncertainty. If they lose, could Todd Bowles be out?

Meanwhile, Falcons owner Arthur Blank spoke with the local PBS affiliate in December, and was noncommittal on the future of coach Arthur Smith and GM Terry Fontenot. I’ve heard he really wants to stay the course. Could Sunday change that? If things go poorly against the New Orleans Saints, could the chance to land a big fish (Harbaugh? Belichick?) flip his stance? Those are open questions, and I don’t think things are as certain in Atlanta as they were a month ago.

Then, there’s New Orleans, where, at least for now, it seems like staff changes underneath Dennis Allen are more likely than any sort of wholesale change.

• As for teams that could have similar lower-level changes, it’s worth paying attention to the Jacksonville Jaguars and Packers, pending how their seasons finish out. Jaguars coach Doug Pederson, for one, has always been fiercely loyal to his coaches, so how he and GM Trent Baalke look at things will be interesting like where Trevor Lawrence is developmentally. I’d still be surprised if there are any big changes in Green Bay a year ahead of president Mark Murphy’s retirement.

• Most folks would tell you Mike McCarthy has had a really good year in Dallas. But count this as another year during which he probably needs to look good in the playoffs to be safe, especially with the prospect that Dan Quinn could actually bolt (Chargers? Seahawks, if Pete Caroll were to retire?) this time around.