As this year in the NFL comes to a close, the league will look a lot different heading into next season.
The coaching carousel has been buzzing the past couple of months, with names like Jim Harbaugh making their way back into NFL head coaching.
But some of the biggest surprises when it comes to NFL head coach news has been the people that have been fired, and though they were expected to get another chance, they were seemingly hung out to dry.
That happened with former Tennessee Titan head coach Mike Vrabel, and more notably with the legendary, longtime New England Patriots leader Bill Belichick.
His firing and inability to get another head coaching job even surprised former quarterback Tom Brady, who had this to say about the head coach he played 20 years for:
“I’m surprised that the greatest coach ever doesn’t have a job.”
As it became clear that the New England Patriots would be moving on from Belichick, there were a number of teams that seemed interested in the head coach’s services once he was a “free agent.”
However, the Atlanta Falcons were the only team to announce a formal interview with Bill, and eventually went with Raheem Morris instead. No one really knew why they decided to go with Morris over Belichick, though NFL analyst Boomer Esiason seems to have heard why the Atlanta situation played out the way it did.
Esiason stated on the Boomer and Gio show:
“I was told yesterday, and I do believe it from the source that I got it from, that supposedly, Arthur Blank (Atlanta Falcons owner) was bought in to Bill Belichick and could have offered him the job.
I don’t know why guys say no, but an NFL executive basically told me that they believe that Arthur Blank offered Bill the job.”
Boomer went on to speculate as to why Bill would have said no, with the main assumption being that Belichick wouldn’t have had as much power over the team as he would have wanted (like he had with the Patriots).
You can hear more about why Belichick might have turned down the job in the video clip below:
