Report: Bill Belichick Wasn’t Going to Take Giants Job if It Became Available

For those New York Giants fans who are mourning what appears to be a lost opportunity to bring Bill Belichick, the Giants defensive coordinator from 1985-1990 and architect of the team’s first two Super Bowl-winning defenses “home,” a reunion was apparently never a consideration for the future Hall of Fame coach.

So believes ESPN’s Seth Wickersham, who, in a deep dive into Belichich’s stunning return to the sidelines for the University of North Carolina, provided some insight into just how close–or really how far away–a Belichick-Giants reunion was. 

Wickersham noted that the prospect of the Giants being a rebuilding project and the New York press scrutinizing every step of the way were factors. He added that Belichick “believes the team would do best to retain its current coach, Brian Daboll.”

Besides all that, there was never any guarantee that the Giants were planning to move on from general manager Joe Schoen and Daboll. 

Even if that is the plan–and if Giants co-owner John Mara’s words from October in which he said he didn’t anticipate making a change during or after the season are to be believed, it isn’t–there was no guarantee that team ownership had an interest in hiring the 72-year-old Belichick, who surprisingly during the last hiring cycle only drew interest from one of the seven NFL teams (Atlanta) with head coaching vacancies.

Belichick, formally introduced as the Tar Heels’s new head coach on Thursday, won six Super Bowl championships with the New England Patriots with Tom Brady as the team’s quarterback. He is also a three-time AP NFL Coach of the Year winner, most recently winning the award in 2010.

By returning to North Carolina, he joins a program that his father Steve was a part of from 1953 to 1955 as a backfield coach.