For all the jokes made about coaches from Bill Belichick’s staff not exactly doing well — we may have contributed here as well — it sure seems like that tree is expanding at a rapid pace.
In 2019 the following Belichick acolytes held head coaching gigs: Bill O’Brien, Matt Patricia, Brian Flores, and Mike Vrabel — and yes we are counting Vrabel because he played under Belichick and cut his teeth in the pros under O’Brien. This doesn’t even count general managers who learned under the Patriots head coach and de facto GM which include Bob Quinn (Lions), Jon Robinson (Titans), Thomas Dimitroff (Falcons) and Jason Licht (Buccaneers).
That joke about Belichick’s assistants being failures may be going by the wayside. Yes, Charlie Weiss didn’t live up to expectations at Notre Dame. Romeo Crennell was probably not cut out to be the head guy — and that’s fine neither was Norv Turner and they both had pretty good careers. Eric Mangini has been excommunicated from anything to do with Belichick at this point. Even Josh McDaniels struggled in his first go-round as a head coach in Denver.
Speaking of McDaniels, he’s under consideration for the Browns head coach position. Others getting interviews include Brian Daboll and Jim Schwartz. Daboll worked under Belichick in New England and Schwartz did the same for the Browns when he was starting his career. That’s three Belichick coaching tree members shooting for the same job. Add that to Joe Judge — the new Giants head coach — and that means that 19 percent of the league could have someone from the Belichick coaching their team. So much for a failure of Belichick assistants.
Even if Patricia is fired — he’s the only person on the list who is even on the hot seat — it’s insane to imagine that so much of the league comes under Belichick’s influence which only seems to be growing.
