BELICHICK THE BROADCASTER MUST FEEL GOOD AS FALCONS TAKE … PENIX?
His deal to join Atlanta fell through in January, and in the end, analyzing the NFL Draft and other football developments will be more enjoyable than arguing with an unproven general manager at age 72
One hundred days after he was hosed on a 295-foot, $180 million superyacht, Bill Belichick must feel very good about his new media career. Back then, he thought a meeting with the Atlanta Falcons’ owner had gone well, somewhere near Antigua. Turns out he was better off buying a snow blower from Arthur Blank at Home Depot.
Whether it was front-office politics or a phone call between Blank and close friend Robert Kraft, who had won six Super Bowls and fought with Belichick for 24 years in New England, something mean prevented him from landing the head coaching job. You don’t think he noticed a qualm Thursday night in the first round of the NFL Draft? The general manager he would have joined, Terry Fontenot, didn’t want Belichick around because, among other reasons, he would have made loud and obnoxious noises when Michael Penix Jr.’s name was uttered so early in the war room.
Armed with the eighth pick, when the Falcons needed defensive help to help make a playoff run, Fontenot and his new coach, Raheem Morris, decided to select Penix — only weeks after they gave Kirk Cousins a four-year, $180 million contract with $100 million guaranteed. Suddenly, they have two quarterbacks and a major controversy that could disrupt the locker room in a town where fans might make racial choices. This makes no sense, even the idea of preparing Penix as a future starter when he’ll be 28 after Cousins’ deal expires. Penix has a long injury history that he overcame at Washington. Cousins is coming off an Achilles tear, yet he received a fat guarantee.
“GRRRRRRRRR!!!” Belichick would have said.
So much for communications between Cousins and his new bosses. His agent, Mike McCartney, says Cousins is frustrated with news he received when the Falcons were about to make the Penix decision. He departed a solid career in Minnesota to join this wacky group? Rather than improve the roster in the trenches, Fontenot picked for the future — if not the near future, if Cousins doesn’t play well. Belichick, who handled Tom Brady for 20 seasons and benched Drew Bledsoe to start the streak, would have avoided the issues. “FFFFF———!!!’’ he would have told the unproven GM.
Hooked up with Pat McAfee on ESPN+ and YouTube, Belichick tried to explain how the pick reminded him of Green Bay selecting Jordan Love. Aaron Rodgers lost his lid and began his ayahuasca fixation. “This is an example where you probably could have traded back to take Penix,” he said, tellingly. “Maybe they thought Denver or somebody else was going to slide in, I don’t know. This seems a little high for him, but there’s a lot to like about Penix. He’s very mature. They talk about the injuries, but he’s been healthy the last two years and he’s won a lot of games on a good football team at Washington. It’s an interesting pick, and look, having two good quarterbacks isn’t a bad thing.”
Oh, unless the receivers, running backs and linemen have differing opinions about the $100 million old guy and the No. 8 pick with the gun arm. Fontenot, in a blue suit, was seen explaining the selection to Blank, in a red suit, at team headquarters. Think the owner was wondering about Belichick in TV land?
“Kirk Cousins is our quarterback,” Fontenot said. “We’re very excited about Kirk. We’re very excited about this team. Michael Penix is … we’re talking about the future. You look at the future. You look at the big picture. We are very excited about that quarterback room, and again, Kirk is our quarterback. But adding Michael Penix is thinking about the future.”
What if Atlanta fans, who realize the Falcons never have won a Super Bowl in a college football state, prefer immediacy? “These are not easy decisions — these are tough decisions," Fontenot said. “But that's who we're thinking about. We're thinking about the fans, we're thinking about this organization. We're going to build a sustained winner. We're going to win for a long time. That's the most important position in football. This is a business, right? The tough part is obviously you're not going to always please everybody.”
Welcome to Atlanta, Raheem. Already, he is dealing with resentment in the Cousins camp. “He got called on the clock, obviously because of the sensitive time with the issues of what you’ve got going on,” Morris said. “It's never a right time to talk to a quarterback about those things. And reactions are always going to be private when it comes to those things, unless Kirk decides to tell you some of those things that are whatever they may be. But he's a competitor, just like us all. And you can always expect those things to go just like you kind of think.”
What, ugliness in training camp? Morris acknowledged the Packers were discussed — and how Love succeeded last season after replacing Rodgers. “It's been proven to be right last year, so hopefully we'll be right with them,” he said. The big difference: Cousins just arrived in Atlanta while Rodgers had been with Green Bay since 2005.
And Penix? Good luck. “He's been in the league. He's been in there for a while,” he said of the veteran. “He's played a lot of football. I feel like I'm going to come in and I'm going to learn. I'm going to learn from him.”
Or Cousins will sulk and ask for a trade.
The grumpier Belichick emerged when the Patriots made their first pick, at No. 3, where Drake Maye will replace Mac Jones as the potential successor to Brady. If he had remained in New England, Maye wouldn’t have been his choice. “Drake compares himself a lot to Josh Allen, he’s been doing that for quite a while — we’ll see about that,” he said. “I think there are some similarities in terms of size and athleticism, but Josh Allen is a pretty special player now.”
The problems? “Drake Maye, his footwork needs a lot of work,” he said. “Here, he's all over the place. Never resets his feet. Never really gets in position to throw. Gets strip-sacked. Too much hopping around. Step up and throw.” As opposed to Brady and Peyton Manning, of whom he said, “They did everything you wanted a quarterback to do in the pocket … two hands on the ball and eyes downfield.”
No one expected kindness, even on draft night. He’s still Belichick. He found some issues with the lead selection, Caleb Williams, and also commended him. Of receiver Malik Nabers, who belongs to the New York Giants, he said, “There's so much to like about Nabers, and he's very very tough to cover.”
So far, no one at Fox Sports has followed on my brilliant idea — have Belichick and Brady in the top broadcast booth with Kevin Burkhardt. Can you imagine them arguing late in the fourth quarter, if not tugging at each other’s throats? Apparently, Belichick wants to continue in a studio, which explains why he’ll settle for a Monday night role with Peyton and Eli Manning at Omaha Productions, as the Athletic reported.
At 72, Belichick might have so much fun raving in public that he won’t want to coach again. His 333 victories are second historically, and no one thinks less of him because he’s 14 behind Don Shula. He also appeared on TikTok at the draft, not that he knows where he is or who’s employing him. He is great at talking football.
I stopped liking him as a coach between Spygate and Deflategate. I can’t wait for the next round of Broadcasting Bill, who should provide updates on the Falcons and why Arthur Blank gave up on him at sea. And why Brady, of all things, still wants to return as a quarterback.
Talk, talk.
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Jay Mariotti, called “without question the most impacting Chicago sportswriter of the past quarter-century,’’ writes general sports columns for Substack while appearing on some of the 1,678,498 podcasts and shows in production today. He is an accomplished columnist, TV panelist and talk/podcast host. Living in Los Angeles, he gravitated by osmosis to film projects.