Bill Belichick’s secretive past at odds with messy present, plus Florida QB recruits

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Today in college football news, Chvrches is on pace for generational numbers in my Spotify Wrapped this year.

The Hoodie: From NFL’s most guarded to CFB’s rumor magnet

To be clear, I still don’t exactly care about the details of Bill Belichick’s personal life. But I am fascinated that the personal details being broadcasted all over the place for months are his, of all people’s.

There are at least three Belichicks. You tell me whether these are all the same person:

• In 2016, Forbes had an entire article with the then-accurate (but now-quaint) title “Inside Bill Belichick’s Masterful Game Of Media Manipulation,” all about the experiences of Patriots reporters who spent years striving to lure him into revealing depth-chart morsels. Those reporters were then usually glowered at, cussed at or ignored. Until about a year ago, the primary image of Mr. We’re On To Cincinnati was a brick wall in a Palpatine hoodie. You’re not getting anything out of him, because doing so might alter his team’s chances of winning. Buttoned-up.
• Despite his reputation for menacingly stonewalling, Pats writers said for years that he’d happily unspool a winding explanation about football technique or history, as long as it doesn’t relate to his team’s upcoming strategies. This was the coach who capably broke out a scientific explanation of how gas works in an attempt to explain away Deflategate. Want somebody to monologue about punt protectors on command? Prepare to be captivated. You’re getting a lot out of him, but it’s not going to have anything to do with his team’s chances of winning. Buttoned-up.
• So far, those are two different ways of establishing total command over media relations, whether reporters liked it or not. And then there’s the third Belichick, the one regularly featured in the kinds of stories referred to as “distractions,” like his feud with his own dynastic quarterback. So yeah, all along, there were cracks in the taciturn sphinx’s face. But even that stuff was nothing like the UNC situation, where we’re getting constant chatter about not just his professional dealings, but his entire life. Is anybody getting anything out of any of this? What’s happening? Who am I? Is anything buttoned at all anymore?

I guess I can imagine a way to tie those things together. When he has control, he wields it thoroughly by punishing and rewarding inquiries based on how they suit his goals. But once his control gets wobbly, gosh, does it wobble.

Most recently on One Tree Chapel Hill:

• Jordon Hudson, Belichick’s girlfriend and veritable manager, “played an instrumental role in stopping” UNC from appearing on “Hard Knocks,” The Athletic reported yesterday.
• The coach is also now having a public dispute with CBS over that awkward moment from an interview this past weekend. Eventful book tour! Got ’em talking!

Also, I keep thinking about this: Belichick and Nick Saban have often been compared to each other, and for a lot of obvious reasons. They’re decades-long friends who were on the same Cleveland Browns staff, they’ve won a combined 4 million championships and they’re both brilliant at explaining football, despite being gruffly dismissive at least half the time.

The past few months have presented a blatant distinction, though. The idea of Saban’s off-field dealings somehow becoming the heart of rampant internet gossip among even people who don’t care about sports at all? Totally unfathomable.

Quick Snaps

An Answer: Sunshine State’s peculiar lack of elite QBs

Since the state of Florida is always so clearly loaded with high school football talent, how come it rarely generates top-end quarterback recruits?

As a longtime member of the recruiting map’s Big 3 states (or Big 4, depending on whether you place Georgia alongside California, Florida and Texas, as you should), the nation’s dangly appendage should have a steady share of top QBs. However, as Manny Navarro wrote yesterday:

“From 2010 through 2025, Florida produced only three quarterbacks who ranked among the top 100 prospects nationally — Jeff Driskel (No. 17 in 2011), Feleipe Franks (No. 54 in 2016) and Deondre Francois (No. 66 in 2015). Eight states have produced more top-100 quarterbacks during this stretch.”

Elsewhere in Manny’s story, former Miami high school QB Teddy Bridgewater “said his mother couldn’t afford private coaching,” a common experience in a state where one QB coach “blames the developmental issues on the lack of financial support in Florida’s public school system.”

To some extent, that’s also a self-perpetuating stigma. Remember the years of debate about the Miami area’s Lamar Jackson, a Heisman winner and two-time NFL MVP, allegedly being better suited to play wide receiver?

“I never took quarterback seriously,” says Bridgewater, an 11-year NFL veteran and championship coach at his old high school, “because you knew your chance of making the league at quarterback was scarce.”

More here in Manny’s story.

Next, it’s mailbag time, and then I’ll see you next week!

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