Across the three hiring cycles since leaving New England, Bill Belichick has received just one interview. The latest cycle featured 10 head-coaching vacancies, yet his name did not surface as a candidate. In the previous year, the Raiders, alongside Tom Brady, chose Pete Carroll without seriously considering Belichick. So, it’s safe to say that the league has given little reason to believe a return is waiting for him. However, after North Carolina’s recent turnaround, the 74-year-old coach is back in the conversation.

“I’ve always thought that teams should be interested. The problem is teams haven’t been interested,” NFL insider Adam Schefter said during an appearance on Rich and Ken with Ted Johnson on October 21. “I mean, we can continue to wish it to happen, but it hasn’t happened in the last years.”

Belichick’s résumé is not in question. He won six Super Bowls as head coach of the Patriots, led the Browns for five seasons before moving to New England, and finished his NFL head-coaching career with 333 wins. That total makes him the second-winningest coach in league history, per NFL.com. Along the way, the Patriots also piled up nine AFC championships, 17 division titles, and 30 playoff wins.

Now, what remains uncertain is whether an NFL owner wants to hire him again with the authority and working conditions Belichick would prefer. Still, Schefter isn’t ruling it out completely.

“Bill gets a year older every year, and he’s been out of the league another year,” Schefter said. “Of course it could happen, but again the NFL would have to change its stance. There would have to be a team that would show more interest than any team has in the last couple of years for that to happen.”

The Dallas Cowboys speculation has given that question a specific setting. The Cowboys have dropped to 2-4 after back-to-back losses against the Tampa Bay Buccaneers and the Green Bay Packers, respectively. The offense has scored only 29 points across its past two games.

Radio host Gavin Dawson called Belichick the “best-case scenario” if Dallas decides to fire Brian Schottenheimer before the season ends. Dawson added that the Cowboys and Jerry Jones have long had an affinity for Belichick and tied that to the criteria Jones looks for in a hire. However, he also raised concerns, calling Belichick “probably outdated” and citing odd behavior with his staff late in the Patriots years, though he conceded Belichick is getting results at North Carolina.

Dallas radio host Shan Shariff has also made the case for Belichick, citing the Cowboys’ 11 penalties for 108 yards and an offense that has struggled to find its rhythm.

“This team and organization need someone to reteach the basic fundamentals, to be drilled and killed over situational football,” he said on X.

Shariff stressed that he was not telling Dallas to hire Belichick himself, citing the coach’s age and attitude, only that the organization needs someone cut from the same cloth. He also questioned the softer approach in Dallas, saying “we’ve tried the nice guy thing, and this team doesn’t respond”.

Belichick would bring a long track record of building winning teams. Dallas, meanwhile, has not played in an NFC Championship Game since its 1995 season, a drought that has lasted more than three decades. However, executive vice president Stephen Jones still publicly backed head coach Brian Schottenheimer, saying the Dallas family still believed in him and the coaching staff.

That said, in 2024, Atlanta interviewed Belichick before hiring Raheem Morris. Atlanta’s decision came down to more than one factor, according to a report from ESPN.

Belichick left his first meeting with Arthur Blank on the owner’s yacht feeling good, and Blank was impressed, but the momentum faded before a planned second meeting with CEO Rich McKay and other executives. Raheem Morris, who had interviewed unexpectedly well, impressed the building with his vision and his willingness to work with general manager Terry Fontenot.

Fontenot and McKay, meanwhile, were not keen on working under Belichick, partly because of his influence over the wider organization and the risk of a staff purge followed by a restart whenever he retired. Sources also said Belichick planned to bring back his familiar assistants, one of whom said the staff would have looked like “Patriots South.”

Belichick had told the Falcons he just wanted to coach, but executives concluded that hiring him meant taking on all of him, and one source said he was “voted off the island.” The report also claimed that Patriots owner Robert Kraft, a close friend of Blank, warned Blank about Belichick, though those accounts came with denials. Blank and his top lieutenants ranked the candidates, and Morris was the unanimous top choice while Belichick did not make anyone’s top three.

By December, as Belichick was finalizing the North Carolina deal, ESPN’s Jeremy Fowler reported that Belichick “simply hadn’t garnered much NFL interest if at all this cycle”. The pattern has held since. In August this year, ProFootballTalk.com’s Mike Florio said: “No fan base is clamoring for him. No front office will want to work with him. No owner will become smitten with the notion that he’ll turn an also-ran into a champion.”

Belichick’s work at North Carolina has at least changed the tone of the conversation. His first season ended with a 4-8 record, far below what many expected when the Tar Heels hired one of the most successful coaches in NFL history. The 2026 season has been more encouraging, though. North Carolina improved to 4-2 after beating reigning ACC champions Duke 24-20 on October 17, winning in Durham for the first time since 2022.

Meanwhile, Belichick had already addressed the NFL comeback talk in August. He made it clear that he wasn’t looking for another job. His focus was on North Carolina and the players he had brought into the program. He had said much the same in November 2025, when the Giants fired Brian Daboll after a 2-8 start and Tennessee also had an opening.

In an Instagram statement, Belichick said, “I have not and will not pursue any NFL head coaching vacancies.”

North Carolina still has work to do, but Belichick has shown enough to suggest the Tar Heels could make progress in year two. That has put Belichick’s name into the NFL conversation, even though there is no clear sign the league’s teams are preparing to pursue him. Still, there are doubts around whether he stays at UNC, too. Florio added that the bigger question is whether Belichick earns a third season at UNC, adding that a repeat of last year could leave him out of a job in 2027.

Where does Bill Belichick stand at UNC amid probe fallout and a costly contract?

UNC placed general manager Michael Lombardi on paid administrative leave in late July amid an HR complaint against him, and the university confirmed an investigation into Lombardi the same day the Tar Heels opened preseason practice. It then brought in outside investigators to review the program, per WRAL.

Lombardi resigned on September 3. Defensive coordinator Steve Belichick, Bill’s son, had been on medical leave since August 6 and also resigned effective October 27. The seven-week review, led by outside attorney Nate Huff, included more than 60 interviews, Belichick’s among them.

WRAL reported that the questions centered on allegations of drug use in the program as well as the workplace culture, and CBS noted that the lawyers asked about alleged drug-related conduct involving Steve Belichick and his interactions with players.

UNC said the investigation found actions showing “a disregard for Carolina’s values and standards of conduct,” but described them as isolated in scope rather than a systemic failure, per Fox Sports.

Chancellor Lee Roberts and athletics director Steve Newmark spoke publicly for the first time on September 24, after a Board of Trustees meeting. Roberts said Belichick still has the support of the administration and the board, with expectations on conduct and behavior attached, and called the review voluntary: “Nobody made us do an investigation.”

Newmark added that investigators found the conduct was not pervasive and often unconnected. He said UNC is rolling out training, monitoring and reinforced policies under his and the university counsel’s oversight, and that he and Belichick are working on tightening oversight, compliance, reporting and accountability.

Roberts also credited Belichick for engaging with campus, from shaking hands with students on the first day of classes to sending the team out to pick up trash on a Sunday morning, WRAL reported. Roundtable Sports added that some around the program wanted him gone after the probe, but there appears to be no chance of that now.

Belichick is in the second year of a five-year, $50 million contract with the first three years guaranteed. The deal requires him to promote an atmosphere of compliance and maintain institutional control. Firing him without cause this season would mean paying the rest of his 2026 salary plus the $10 million due in 2027, and USA TODAY Sports’ database put the total buyout at no less than $20.8 million as of December.

Asked earlier this season whether the program maintains an atmosphere of compliance, he answered “yeah, totally.” On September 7 he said the team wants to run the program the right way and will correct anything that needs correcting.