Bill Belichick will be 64 next April. He’ll be entering his 17th season as Patriots head coach, having taken over the team in January of 2000 at the age of 47.
Last season – his 40th as an NFL coach – Belichick won his fourth Super Bowl as a head coach, his sixth in coaching overall.
His coaching peers are not John Harbaugh and Rex Ryan. They are Paul Brown, Vince Lombardi, Chuck Noll, Tom Landry and George Halas.
So when’s Belichick going to put a wrap on things?
The people at NFL Films broach this subject in the soon-to-be-released documentary of the 2014 season, “Do Your Job.”
The impetus for the “how much longer?” question came from the 2009 “A Football Life” documentary on Belichick. While driving in the dark to Gillette Stadium, Belichick said “I won’t be like Marv Levy and coaching in my 70s, I know that.”
This is what some of the Patriots’ principals had to say about that (thanks to the folks at NFL Network for passing along the release).
New England Patriots
Jonathan Kraft, Patriots President: “To project out 13 years isn’t like the Bill Belichick I know. The Bill Belichick I know literally goes minute-to-minute dealing with what’s there. So hopefully his prognostication skills were off talking as a 56 or 57 year old and hopefully when he becomes a 68 year-old he gets new perspective on how young 70 really is.”
Nick Caserio, VP of Player Personnel: “Look, the guy is on a treadmill working out in the spring watching college tape of the 2016 draft prospects. I mean, how many other head coaches are doing that? When that passion isn’t there as much, then he’ll walk away and maybe he’ll go coach lacrosse. I don’t know.”
Ivan Fears, running backs coach: “I just know the man, the way he loves the game, his passion for what he does with the team, it’s hard to imagine him not going until they drag him out of the building.”
Berj Najarian, Director of Football/Head Coach Administration: “The way he always seems to be trying to do things better, do things differently, find the next teaching tool or training tool that is going to help us this year, next year, really get systems in place, this doesn’t strike me as someone who’s just coasting along here.”
My sense is that milestones mean a lot to Belichick. For years, when making a point about something he’s witnessing, he’ll use his tenure in the NFL as an intro.. “In my 36 years of coaching in this league…” and then the rest. He just hit a milestone with 40 years. Fifty? That would seem a stretch. But 20 years in New England which would be through the 2019 season? That’s a guess but it’s a tidy number that might appeal to him.
At some point. At this point, I don’t believe it to be on his daily radar.