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But the real tell that Belichick will be using broadcasting to campaign for his next coaching job is his latest venture, which was announced July 31. He’s going to host and co-produce a show with Underdog Fantasy, airing on YouTube, titled, “Coach with Bill Belichick” — a program on which Belichick will constantly remind owners why he’s better than their current coach … uh, I mean take fans through the process of film preparation, analyzing game situations, and managing a team as if he were coaching it.
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How convenient. Unsure owners can immediately juxtapose what their coach is doing to what Belichick would be doing. It’s a brilliant ploy on the 72-year-old’s part. Remind them what they’re missing out on.
“This show is going to give fans a comprehensive look at the behind-the-scenes of the National Football League,” said Belichick in a press release. “What it’s like to coach, how to prepare, how to team build, exactly the way I would do it if I was coaching a team.”
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Insert that ubiquitous meme of Jack Nicholson nodding his head with a sly smile.
The old bromide about Belichick playing chess when everyone else is playing checkers applies here.
Why else would the man who famously proclaimed in 2009, “You know how I feel about stats. Stats are for losers. The final score is for winners,” proclaim a fantasy- and gambling-focused media outlet is “a great fit,” as if it were one of his trademark cut-off hoodies?
On my sports bingo card, the last thing I foresaw was our resident saturnine sideline stalker becoming broadcast teammates with baseball ambassador/self-made media maven Jared Carrabis, also signed to Underdog.
As science fiction author Philip Jose Farmer once offered: “Resurrection, like politics, makes strange bedfellows.”
Belichick needs a rebrand after posting a 29-39 record in four post-QB Jesus seasons and being excluded from all seven NFL coaching hires he was eligible for last offseason. He’s 15 wins short of breaking Don Shula’s all-time wins mark (347), and he’s not going down without a fight.
These media roles are designed to ameliorate his putative shortcomings and rehabilitate his image HGTV-style.
On the McAfee show, he’ll get to dispel the notion that he’s a bloodless football automaton missing a personality program. He’ll display his trademark dry wit and surprising sense of humor, which is rarely unsheathed for public consumption.
The show with the Manning brothers will display his humility — he lost two Super Bowls to Eli and three AFC Championship games to Peyton — and, more importantly, his ability to get along with franchise quarterbacks. That was an issue in his twilight in New England when he feuded with Tom Brady and iced out Mac Jones, at one point refraining from referring to his young quarterback by name.
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“Inside the NFL” will highlight him providing keen insight and analysis on the intricacies of the game alongside former NFL players Ryan Clark, Chris Long, and Chad Johnson, the latter two former players for Belichick. It will showcase that Belichick can accept, consider, and process the opinions and insights of other knowledgeable football minds and work as part of a collaborative. It will serve as a counter to the perception that Belichick is too much of an autocrat.
His Underdog Fantasy show will be part coaching version of a mock trial team and part coaching doctorate class. It will highlight Belichick’s sui generis strengths and acumen.
In the NFL, teams have four downs to earn a new set of downs. Belichick has four jobs to keep his coaching career alive. It’s genius on his part: the LinkedIn equivalent of snapping the ball off the goalposts in Denver for an intentional safety.
Plus, it helps that Belichick has already shown he can flourish wearing a microphone. He won an Emmy for his work on the NFL Network’s “NFL 100 All-Time Team” series.
For all their media-averse machinations over the years, no team puts more ex-employees into the industry than the Patriots. There is a well-worn path from Patriot Place to plopping down in front of a camera. Brady will try his hand in the broadcast booth this season as the top analyst for Fox Sports.
You can never completely rule out a Brady comeback, but Belichick’s transformation into Broadcast Bill is all about his coaching comeback, about rinsing away the residue of a 4-13 final season in Foxborough.
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People often would ask why Belichick was so curmudgeonly with the media during his distinguished 24-year tenure as Patriots coach.
It was simple: Football coaches are control freaks, and Belichick is the ne plus ultra of control-freak coaches. He could control everything inside the walls of Fort Foxborough except media members, who weren’t under his iron-fisted rule. So he developed his own tight-lipped, cantankerous affectation as a measure of control.
He can drop that veil as easily as he lifted it all these years, which is why transitioning into the media isn’t as bizarre as it seems.
It’s all part of his plan, and Belichick always has a master plan. If it works, you’d better catch Broadcast Bill this season — because it will be a limited engagement.
Christopher L. Gasper is a Globe columnist. He can be reached at christopher.gasper@globe.com. Follow him @cgasper and on Instagram @cgaspersports.
