The football world is still turning over the recent decision by seven-time Super Bowl champion Bill Belichick to spurn the NFL and take over as head football coach at the University of North Carolina.

And Belichick is still doing a PR campaign for himself to explain that decision.

In the latest episode of his Let’s Go podcast at SiriusXM (one of the numerous media gigs he took during his 2024 coaching sabbatical), Belichick took listeners inside the interview rooms with NFL owners. After many damning reports around Belichick’s poor performance in the 2024 hiring cycle, the former New England Patriots coach attempted to set the record straight on how poor owners are at evaluating football leadership.

“I would say in my experience of interviewing with different owners for head coaching positions, the subject very seldom relates to football,” Belichick said. “It’s about a lot of other things besides football.”

Belichick said that the sole exception over the course of his career was the late Al Davis, the pioneering former owner of the Raiders. Of course, Davis came to ownership via takeover after starting as a coach and executive in the early days of the AFL.

Because so few NFL owners are actually concerned with football, according to Belichick, it is difficult to nail an interview. It is also difficult, he said, to navigate the politics of an organization even when you have the job.

“There’s a lot of cooks in the kitchen, you know, between the general manager, personnel directors, head coaches, owners, owners’ families and so forth,” Belichick explained. “Sometimes, from the outside, it’s a little blurry as to who’s really making the decision, whether the owner has deferred it to somebody, whether he is making it him or herself, or whether it’s a committee or how all that works.”

The legendary coach’s tune has changed since he took the UNC job. For most of 2024, Belichick was actively pursuing NFL posts. Somewhere along the way, his reputation for being controlling and his prickly demeanor led teams to look elsewhere. So Belichick went to college.

At the same time, it would be silly to argue Belichick is wrong. While he may be trying some revisionist history, NFL owners don’t exactly have an impeccable record. Robert Kraft fired him from New England only to install a former player with limited coaching experience who may go one-and-done in Massachusetts. The imploding New York Jets apparently denied whatever interest Belichick may have had in a return. Elsewhere in the league, owners make bad decisions all the time.

Some might say an owner’s job is in fact to think beyond football. After all, they are running a business and in some cases overseeing their family legacy. Making money and being respected matter.

For a football guy like Bill Belichick who rightly believes he would improve a team’s fortunes on the field, this is probably infuriating. The good news for him is he won’t have to deal with it any longer.

All Belichick has to worry about now are boosters, who of course are notoriously pleasant and easy to deal with. Surely Belichick will never run into folks in Durham who have priorities beyond the gridiron.

[Let’s Go Podcast via Pro Football Talk]