Where will Jim Harbaugh and Bill Belichick end up this season? | Inside Coverage
Yahoo Sports’ Jason Fitz and Jori Epstein discuss the head coaching carousel and why Jim Harbaugh and Bill Belichick haven’t found stops yet. Hear the full conversation on “Inside Coverage” - part of the “Zero Blitz” podcast - and subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you listen.
Video Transcript
[VIBRANT MUSIC]
JASON FITZ: I'm a little shooketh all the way to my core because if you'd have asked me on Black Monday to figure out what things we thought were kind of a given, I would have thought by now that we had at least an idea of where Belichick was going to go. And even more shockingly, to me, I thought by now we'd have a firm indication of where Harbaugh would end up.
JORI EPSTEIN: Yeah, I agree with you that it's strange we don't have clarity on Harbaugh yet. I think there are a lot of people in the league last week who thought that Harbaugh to the Chargers was close to a done deal. Harbaugh also wouldn't have had the restrictions that NFL coaches had in terms of hiring-- or, of interviewing-- because he wasn't dealing with the NFL playoffs. His playoffs were already done and done with a pretty good result for him and for teams looking for him. So that surprises me.
In terms of Bill Belichick, I'm not positive that Bill Belichick will be a head coach in 2024. I think it's likely, but I'm not positive. I think that there's a reason we've really only heard from Atlanta hiring him. And I think that there's also a lot of speculation around the league that Atlanta's very interested in other people, including Raheem Morris. And
I think it, honestly, might be most interesting to me how much Belichick is willing to compromise relative to what he wants in order to get a head coaching job. Does he start off going into these interviews, I need roster control. I need this with coaching. I'm bringing in Joe Judge and Matt Patricia and all these guys. And then, if he doesn't get that Atlanta job, does he start to drop in his criteria? What do you think will be his approach?
JASON FITZ: If you're Bill, how much do you want to coach if you can't coach the way you want, how you want? But also, how much are you willing to sacrifice your legacy if you get to do what you want, the way you want, and it doesn't work? If we're being real, when Tom Brady goes into the Hall of Fame, there will be no conversation about who was responsible for his greatness because of what he accomplished in Tampa Bay. That's gone.
If today, Bill Belichick announced to the world he's retiring, in five years, there will be debate shows that will look at each other and say, was it Brady or Belichick? Because we didn't see him do it, that's going to be an inevitability. Five years is not that long.
So if Bill decides that he needs to walk away, or if the market doesn't want him, I think there is going to be real questions in five years that are raised, right or wrong, in the way that they cover Belichick's greatness because we saw Brady do it without Bill. It doesn't mean that Bill is not the greatest of all time. It just means that if he wants those question marks answered, if he wants them eliminated, he's going to have to go somewhere else. And he's going to have to win at a very high level. That's the only thing that stops that conversation.