Bill Belichick has amassed 333 total coaching victories in the NFL, second only to the late Don Shula. He coached the New England Patriots to six Super Bowl victories and served as defensive coordinator on two Super Bowl-winning editions of the New York Giants. He possesses a genius-level knowledge of the NFL, not just in terms of X’s and O’s but also the A-B-C’s of the game’s rich history. And yet his pivot to college football — he was introduced Thursday as the new head coach at the University of North Carolina — has been met with varying degrees of skepticism, raised eyebrows and even outright hilarity.

Why, one may ask, is a coach who has accomplished so much being treated in such a negative light? Part of the problem is Belichick’s spectacularly stiff and grumpy public persona, but it’s much deeper than that. Let’s examine some of the reasons, real and imagined, why the mere mention of Belichick’s name inspires so many different reactions from people.

‘He never won anything without Tom Brady‘

It always begins here, does it not? Belichick is the greatest coach in football history if the accounting is limited to Super Bowl rings, but there’s always that nagging Tom Brady issue that raises two questions: 1) What has Belichick won without Brady, and 2) Has a Bradyless existence exposed Belichick’s inability to get the job done at this stage of his career?

Fact: Without getting too specific with the numbers, such as weaving in the games in which Jacoby Brissett and Jimmy Garoppolo were quarterbacking the Patriots in 2016 while Brady was sitting out his four-game “Deflategate” suspension, the big picture is that Belichick has won six Super Bowls with Brady as his quarterback and none without Brady as his quarterback.

Fact: Belichick didn’t win any Super Bowls during the five seasons he coached the original Cleveland Browns. He didn’t win one in his first year in New England when Brady was a rookie whose sole appearance was a Thanksgiving Day cameo against the Detroit Lions. He didn’t win one in the four post-Brady seasons in New England.

But at the risk of getting too lawyerly, what’s also true is that Belichick and Brady, as a coach-quarterback tandem, combined to win six Super Bowls. That’s an inconvenient truth to hardened Belichick bashers, but to remove it from the discussion is to assume Brady would have quarterbacked the Patriots to six Super Bowl victories regardless of the coach. Those types of alternate historical timelines are fun in the “Back to the Future” movies but don’t work here in the real world.

Cheating controversies

There’s really no getting around this one. In 2007, Belichick and the Patriots organization were disciplined by the NFL after it had been determined they videotaped signals by New York Jets defensive coaches during New England’s season-opening 38-14 victory at Giants Stadium.

The Patriots were fined $250,000 and lost their first-round pick in the 2008 draft. Belichick was fined $500,000. It was this “Spygate” scandal that resulted in Belichick being branded as “Beli-cheat,” a nickname his critics are happy to break out of mothballs whenever they’re in the mood.

Years later, the Patriots were embroiled in another cheating controversy when Brady was investigated for allegedly using underinflated footballs in New England’s 45-7 victory over the Indianapolis Colts in the 2014 AFC Championship Game. The NFL’s investigation, which dragged on in the courts for well over a year before Brady was finally suspended for the first four games of the 2016 season, was widely criticized as a colossal overreach by the NFL. And, anyway, Belichick was never implicated.

But Spygate often gets twinned up with Deflategate in any discussion of the Belichick era in New England, as is former San Diego Chargers running back LaDainian Tomlinson’s blistering 2007 observation that, “I think the Patriots actually live by the saying, ‘If you’re not cheatin’, you’re not trying.’ You keep hearing the different stories of people complaining about stuff that they do. So I’m not surprised.”

Spygate was a cheap stunt by Belichick that apparently didn’t yield much information. He deserves to wear this one. And not to pile on with Deflategate, but Belichick has long been cheered as the ultimate micromanager and a master of attending to every last teeny-weeny detail. If his supporters want to enter these talking points into the discussion, his critics should be granted license to say, “OK, then he should have known somebody was goofing with the footballs.”

The Kraftmatic Adjustable Storyline

Following the 2023 season, during which New England went 4-13, Belichick was fired by Patriots owner Robert Kraft, thus ending one of the greatest coaching runs in NFL history. Only it wasn’t portrayed as a “firing” by Kraft. Instead, it was presented as a “mutual parting of ways,” with the two men appearing together at a Gillette Stadium news conference and fumbling through one of the most awkward hugs in sports history.

“The man standing to my left brought the leadership and coaching skills that were needed to make the type of unprecedented success that we have had possible,” Kraft said that day. “Coach Belichick will forever be celebrated as a legendary sports icon here in New England and I believe go in as a Pro Football Hall of Famer on the first ballot. Why? Because he is the greatest coach of all time.”

Yet Kraft had less flattering things to say about his former coach in “The Dynasty,” the 10-part TV docuseries that aired in early 2024. Among them, Kraft used the occasion to dish that he called Belichick a “schmuck” in the aftermath of the Spygate scandal. The quote had been reported years earlier, but only by source; here now was Kraft speaking the word on camera and feeling quite comfortable doing so. It wasn’t like some off-camera interviewer lured Kraft into a trap.

Belichick didn’t come out of “The Dynasty” looking good. But it may have backfired on Kraft, who in 2024 was again denied his dream of being elected to the Pro Football Hall of Fame.

Meet the new coach, same as the very old coach

Belichick, who turns 73 on April 16, will be the oldest active coach in college football in 2025. But he was already being dismissed as too old and out of touch during his last few seasons in New England, at a time when the NFL was beginning to look to much younger coaches to run their teams. Sean McVay is a prime example: He was just 31 in his first season as head coach of the Los Angeles Rams in 2017, and 35 when he coached the ’21 Rams toward a 23-20 victory over the Cincinnati Bengals in Super Bowl LVI.

Mike Felger, the longtime afternoon drive host at Boston’s 98.5 The Sports Hub, often makes reference to “tight-pants coaches” — younger, well-built coaches who are steeped in analytics and are believed to have the sensibilities to relate with modern players. But to dismiss Belichick solely because of his age is to ignore a trend in the modern American workforce, says Debra Whitman, executive vice president and chief policy officer at AARP.

“The share of workers over age 75 is the only part of our (American) labor force that’s predicted to grow,” Whitman said. “People want to work, or they need to work — they either need the money or they love to work.” (In Belichick’s case, it’s the love of the work. He certainly doesn’t need the money.)

Whitman, author of “The Second Fifty: Answers to the 7 Big Questions of Midlife and Beyond,” believes there’s a “huge value to society in keeping people who have lots of experience and knowledge engaged.”

According to Whitman, research by the Organization of Economic Development and Cooperation has shown that a multi-generational workforce “actually makes a workplace more productive.”

GO DEEPER

What do top prospects and high school coaches think about the Bill Belichick hire?

They may not talk about it on ‘Inside the NFL,’ but he’s not popular inside the NFL

As reported by The Athletic’s Jeff Howe, one of the reasons Belichick hasn’t been offered a head-coaching job in the NFL since leaving the Patriots is, in the words of a high-ranking team executive, “(Belichick) burned a lot of bridges over his career.”

If so, it’s not just Spygate that ruffled feathers in the NFL. Cheating scandals happen all the time in professional sports, whereupon fines and suspensions are levied, but there are usually avenues for redemption. Consider what happened in MLB after manager A.J. Hinch and bench coach Alex Cora were suspended for a year following a sign-stealing scandal involving the 2017 Houston Astros. Hinch was later hired as manager of the Detroit Tigers. Cora, who had moved on to Boston and managed the Red Sox to a World Series championship in 2018, was fired by the club after the 2019 season, sat out 2020 and was rehired for 2021.

Bill Belichick isn’t exactly Joe College

The lede to a column by The Athletic’s Stewart Mandel on Belichick landing the UNC job minces no words: “Congratulations, North Carolina. You managed to hire someone completely unqualified to be your next football coach. You did that thing so many schools do where they try to win the press conference instead of win football games. It rarely works.”

Belichick has never coached college football at any level, under any title. Yes, his father, the late Steve Belichick, had a long and storied career as an assistant college coach, mostly at the United States Naval Academy. Yes, Belichick’s son, also named Steve, is the defensive coordinator at the University of Washington. And, yes, Bill Belichick made some visits to Washington practices last spring.

None of that adds up to actual college coaching experience, even if Belichick went to extraordinary lengths at his introductory news conference to make it appear this is where he’s wanted to be all along.

“I always wanted to coach in college football,” Belichick said. “It just never really worked out. I had some good years in the NFL, so that was OK. This is really kind of a dream come true.”

That’s a hard one to get behind, but we’ll play along. Can it work? We posed the question to former Patriots running back Kevin Faulk, who played under Belichick for 13 seasons, including three Super Bowl championship teams.

“Bill will figure it out,” Faulk said. “When he’s dealing with football, he’s all in.”

And yet even Faulk felt the need to wave a warning flag.

“The kids are not what they used to be,” Faulk said. “I feel like there’s some real difficulty he’s going to have to go through.”

A new era for @UNCFootball.

Bill Belichick talks to @MartySmithESPN about his decision to come to North Carolina 🐏 pic.twitter.com/PKZ8Okadub

— ACC Network (@accnetwork) December 13, 2024

Belichick hates the media

Make no mistake: Belichick has never enjoyed his sessions with the media, and over the years he developed a talent for sidestepping even basic questions. “We did what was best for the team,” he’d often say.

But it was never Belichick’s style to be bombastic or confrontational. He’d sometimes roll out a childish staredown when confronted with an unwanted line of questioning, but these attempts came across as comical, not menacing. He could even be funny once every four or five years, such as when he dropped in a reference to the Mona Lisa Vito character from the film “My Cousin Vinny” during the Deflategate saga.

Based on a random tour of the coverage of Belichick this week, the harsh stuff is coming from outside New England. But while Belichick’s sullen news conference performances never did him any harm back in the day — such as when the Patriots were competing for Super Bowls every year — he’ll be wise to freshen up the act at Chapel Hill.

Nothing says “old man yelling at a cloud” like being sullen with the 19-year-old kid from the college paper.

(Photo of Bill Belichick and Robert Kraft: Maddie Meyer / Getty Images)

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Houston Texans defensive back Calen Bullock delivered the hit on Miami Dolphins wide receiver Grant DuBose that created a scary situation for the player on Sunday.

DuBose was down on the field for several moments and medical personnel had to cut off his jersey and remove his shoulder pads before placing him on a stretcher and carrying him out of the arena. DuBose spent the rest of the night in the hospital.

Bullock told reporters he didn’t think he was going to face discipline for the play.

“My intention was never to go out there and just try to completely take someone out of the game and hurt somebody,” he said, via KPRC-TV.

“My intentions was never to go out and hurt nobody, that’s never any of our intentions. So, prayers out to him and his family. I hope he’s good. I was just seeing the ball, and I was breaking on the ball, and it just happened to be one of those type of plays.”

Bullock was flagged on the play. DuBose appeared to clench his fists after the hit – movements consistent with the “fencing response.”

CHIEFS GIVE INJURY UPDATE ON PATRICK MAHOMES AFTER GETTING SHAKEN UP IN WIN OVER BROWNS

Grant DuBose of the Miami Dolphins is stretchered off the field after an injury during the Texans game at NRG Stadium on Dec. 15, 2024, in Houston. (Tim Warner/Getty Images)

“Very tough to have seen live,” Dolphins quarterback Tua Tagovailoa said. “I’m my toughest critic when it comes to ball placement, when it comes to knowing where to go with the ball and all that. I just feel bad that I even put him in that situation to have gotten hit. It was tough to move on after that happened.”

Tagovailoa had multiple concussions in his NFL career – some extremely scary for a live audience to witness firsthand. 

“We all know that I’ve gone through something similar, and that’s no fun,” Tagovailoa added. “You never want to be put in any of those situations, but you also understand that this is a physical sport. It’s a contact sport. Again, I just think of what I could have done to not put Grant in that situation.”

It was the second straight Texans game in which an opposing player was injured by a sketchy hit. Houston linebacker Azeez Al-Shaair hit Jacksonville Jaguars quarterback Trevor Lawrence on Dec. 1.

Miami Dolphins wide receiver Grant DuBose is brought down by Texans safety Calen Bullock, Sunday, Dec. 15, 2024, in Houston. (AP Photo/Eric Christian Smith)

Al-Shaair was given a three-game suspension for the hit.

The Associated Press contributed to this report. 

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BEAVER CREEK, Colo. — Before starting down the track, ski racers often receive course reports by radio, detailing conditions and delivered by teammates at the finish who skied the course ahead of them.

It’s not every day those reports come from Lindsey Vonn, three-time Olympic medalist, 82-time World Cup winner and one of alpine skiing’s greats.

But they did on Saturday, when Vonn foreran the downhill course at Beaver Creek’s Birds of Prey World Cup course, testing the track for conditions and safety before some of the world’s top skiers hit the slopes — and radioing up to her American teammates encouraging them to send it.

The sun was high, the course was fast and the mood was celebratory as Vonn came through the finish in a spray of snow, waving to cheers from a packed crowd. As a forerunner, her time has not been released and did not count for the official standings, topped by Cornelia Huetter from Austria with a time of 1:32.38.

“I am so friggin’ happy to be back here,” Vonn said in an interview with Birds of Prey commentator Parker Biele after forerunning the course.

She’s baaackkk 😏

From her 2011 super-G win to forerunning the historic women’s Birds of Prey downhill, it only feels right that @lindseyvonn‘s comeback starts here.

She’ll do it again for tomorrow’s super-G 🤘#stifelusskiteam pic.twitter.com/aKZhRAAH0I

— U.S. Ski & Snowboard Team (@usskiteam) December 14, 2024

The last time Vonn raced at a World Cup event was in 2019, not long before her retirement brought on by years of injuries. But last month, Vonn announced a comeback to the world of alpine racing, attempting what very few have done: return to the sport’s top tier, at age 40, after years of retirement.

Vonn raced earlier this month at a lower-level event at Copper Mountain in Colorado, securing the minimum points needed to request a wild card entry into World Cup races, reserved for retired skiers who have found success at the top of the sport. After forerunning at Birds of Prey, she plans to make her return to World Cup competition next weekend at St. Moritz in Switzerland.

That will be more than two decades since Vonn made her World Cup debut in 2000 at age 16. In the years that followed, she became one of the most successful women in alpine racing, developing a reputation for fast, powerful skiing. She often raced with men’s skis and frequently requested to compete on men’s courses, to no avail.

Things have changed since then. On Saturday, women raced the challenging downhill Birds of Prey track at Beaver Creek — typically reserved for men — for the first time. The only other time women competed at the course was in 2011 on a version of the Super-G track, when a lack of snow in France relocated the event for one year only (women also raced an adjacent course at Beaver Creek in 2015). The winner of that 2011 race? Vonn.

“Birds of Prey is a hill that constantly is pulling you down,” Vonn said Friday about her past experience at Beaver Creek. “You can go extremely fast … if you let it take you.”

It’s that past experience that Biele, a former racer herself now commentating at the event, says is invaluable for fellow American women.

“What she’s able to do is provide mentorship to them and really guide them,” Biele said. “She’s raced all these hills before. So having somebody who’s done that and been on these tracks and has had this experience is such a valuable asset to give to this next generation of racers.”

With Birds of Prey historically reserved for men, U.S. women have not had too many chances to race World Cups on home soil.

“To have this opportunity to really take advantage of it is so nice, and to come down to a home crowd, I mean, in Europe, there are some U.S. fans there, but to come down and have someone cheering for you is such a nice feeling,” said Lauren Macuga, 22, who finished fourth with a time of 1:32.90, the fastest of the seven Americans racing Saturday and the only one to break the top 10. “It’s so exciting.”

More than two dozen family members and friends came out to support 2022 Olympian Bella Wright, passing out t-shirts to a largely American crowd — a rare occurrence when many women’s World Cups take place abroad.

“I’ve been coming to Beaver Creek to watch the men since I was 4 years old,” Wright said on Friday before racing began. “It means a lot for me to be here and it means even more to have the women be able to do the same track as the men. I think that historically this is just going to be a moment that we’re going to look back on and realize that women can do more men’s tracks, which is so exciting.”

It’s exciting for locals too. Kathi Kotula has lived in Vail Valley for 27 years and has worked the Birds of Prey event for 14. (She was looking forward to seeing Vail local and alpine great Mikaela Shiffrin race the course, but Shiffrin is out with an injury after crashing last month during a World Cup race in Vermont.)

“We’re used to the grandeur of all the men coming into town and the excitement and the fun, but I swear, this year, when they announced women would be coming, there was a joy in the valley,” Kotula said. “We were so stoked that we had the opportunity.”

As Birds of Prey wraps up and the World Cup circuit continues, attention now turns to how Vonn will perform in top-level races — and whether she could be competitive for the 2026 Olympics.

Her comeback at age 40 is unprecedented among female alpine skiers. When Vonn retired in 2019, she was already the oldest woman to medal in alpine skiing at the Olympics, winning bronze at age 33 at Pyeongchang in 2018. Earlier this year, Italian Federica Brignone, 34, became the oldest woman to win a World Cup race. (Brignone placed ninth in the downhill on Saturday).

But Vonn joins a larger group of professional athletes to compete into their 40s, including sports legends like Serena Williams and Tom Brady. In 2022, French skier Johan Clarey became the oldest alpine racer to medal at the Olympics at age 41.

Spectators cheer for Lindsey Vonn on Saturday during the first women’s World Cup event held on the famed Birds of Prey course at Beaver Creek. (Jason Connolly / AFP via Getty Images)

At Beaver Creek on Friday, Vonn also cited women younger than her pushing age boundaries in their respective sports — namely Simone Biles, who made her third Olympic team this past summer at age 27. In Paris, Biles became the oldest women’s Olympic all-around gold medalist since 1952.

“I think Simone Biles is the perfect example of what can be done at an older age, and she’s not even old. It’s just, it’s outside of the confines of what we believe is the right age for the sport,” Vonn said.

“I don’t think I’m reinventing the wheel, I’m just doing what I feel is right for me, but at the same time continuing on what other women have done before me.”

Vonn has cited a variety of reasons driving her comeback: She missed having teammates, she missed skiing, she missed skiing fast.

But the main reason Vonn returned from retirement was straightforward: Her body could do it.

“What changed my mind was just that I was put back together again,” Vonn said.

It’s an outcome that seemed far from guaranteed after years of high-speed crashes, painful injuries and surgeries, including a series of ligament tears in her knee in 2013 and 2014. She retired in 2019 not long after yet another ligament tear.

“The last years of my career, I think, were a lot more challenging than I let on and anyone really understood,” Vonn said.

Eight months after knee replacement surgery and more than five years since her last race, Vonn said she feels better at 40 than she did at times earlier in her career.

“I couldn’t do, you know, a 10-inch jump, single leg, over the last few years of my career,” she said. “And now I’m doing 20 inches, no problem.”

Whether or not Vonn can get back on top is another question, one that will be answered in the next few months of racing.

She certainly has her skeptics. In the world of sports, comeback announcements are often accompanied by cynics wondering if it’s all just for sponsorships or press coverage. With Vonn’s history of injuries and the dangers of skiing, some fans just don’t think she can do it.

“I’m 10 years on a knee replacement, so I know what that’s all about, but racing’s a lot different,” said Bruce Evans, a spectator who arrived at Beaver Creek Saturday decked out in an American flag ski suit, carrying an American flag signed by everyone from 1960s alpine Olympian Billy Kidd to Vonn herself.

“Especially in downhills, you’re on the edge all the time or you’re not going to be near the top in the finish order. As far as her making the choice, hey, more power to her, especially if she can be successful at it.”

Vonn says she’s all in.

“I don’t just whimsically rejoin the U.S. Ski Team,” she said Friday.

Instead, Vonn said she plans to get back to where she was before retirement.

“Success is not just participating,” Vonn said.

GO DEEPER

With World Cup in her backyard, Mikaela Shiffrin and Aleksander Kilde focus on recovery

(Top illustration: Meech Robinson / The Athletic; photos: Dustin Satloff / U.S. Ski and Snowboard / Getty Images; Mine Kasapoglu / Anadolu Agency via Getty Images; Ezra Shaw / Getty Images)