1. Belichick is a descendant of the Bill Parcells coaching tree.
50 Facts About Bill Belichick
2.
Bill Belichick began his coaching career in 1975 as an assistant for the Baltimore Colts and became the defensive coordinator for New York Giants head coach Bill Parcells by 1985.
3.
Parcells and Bill Belichick won two Super Bowls together before Bill Belichick left to become the head coach of the Cleveland Browns in 1991.
4.
Bill Belichick remained in Cleveland for five seasons but was fired following the team's 1995 season.
5.
At the time Bill Belichick left the Patriots, he was the NFL's longest-tenured active head coach.
6.
Bill Belichick has the most playoff coaching wins all-time with 31 and ranks third in regular season coaching wins in the NFL with 302.
7.
Bill Belichick is in second place for combined regular season and postseason wins, and second place for most regular season coaching wins with one franchise.
8.
Bill Belichick is one of only three head coaches who have won six NFL titles.
9.
Bill Belichick was named the AP NFL Coach of the Year for the 2003,2007, and 2010 seasons.
10.
Bill Belichick has been selected to the NFL 2000s All-Decade Team, NFL 2010s All-Decade Team, as well as the NFL 100th Anniversary All-Time Team.
11.
Bill Belichick was born in Nashville, Tennessee, on April 16,1952, the son of Jeannette and Steve Bill Belichick.
12.
Bill Belichick is of Croatian ancestry; his paternal grandparents, Marija Barkovic and Ivan Bilicic, emigrated from Draganic in 1897 and settled in Monessen, Pennsylvania, having changed their names to Mary and John Belichick at the suggestion of immigration officers.
13.
Bill Belichick was raised in Annapolis, Maryland, where his father was an assistant football coach at the United States Naval Academy.
14.
Bill Belichick has said his father is one of his most important football mentors, and Bill Belichick often studied football with him.
15.
Bill Belichick reportedly learned to break down game films at a young age by watching his father and the Navy staff do their jobs.
16.
Bill Belichick graduated from Annapolis High School in 1970, where he was a classmate of Sally Brice-O'Hara, who would later become the Vice Commandant of the Coast Guard.
17.
Bill Belichick enrolled at Phillips Academy in Andover, Massachusetts, for a postgraduate year, with the intention of improving his grades and test scores to be admitted into a quality college.
18.
Bill Belichick attended Wesleyan University in Middletown, Connecticut, where he played center and tight end.
19.
In 1976, Bill Belichick joined the Detroit Lions as their assistant special teams coach before adding tight ends and wide receivers to his coaching duties in 1977.
20.
Bill Belichick was dismissed along with head coach Tommy Hudspeth and the rest of the coaching staff on January 9,1978.
21.
Bill Belichick spent the 1978 season with the Denver Broncos as their assistant special teams coach and defensive assistant while serving as director of films.
22.
In 1979, Bill Belichick began a 12-year stint with the New York Giants alongside head coach Ray Perkins as a defensive assistant and special teams coach.
23.
From 1991 until 1995, Bill Belichick was the head coach of the Cleveland Browns.
24.
Bill Belichick had two stints as the head coach of the New York Jets without ever coaching a game.
25.
Six days later, the Patriots and Jets reached an agreement that allowed Parcells to coach the Jets, and Bill Belichick became the team's assistant head coach and defensive coordinator.
26.
However, Bill Belichick was the Jets' head coach for only one day.
27.
Parcells and the Jets claimed that Bill Belichick was still under contract to the Jets, and demanded compensation from the Patriots.
28.
Bill Belichick was awarded the NFL Coach of the Year Award.
29.
Bill Belichick is the only coach to accomplish the feat as the Dallas Cowboys had two head coaches in the stretch they won three of four from 1992 to 1995.
30.
In 2007, Bill Belichick led the Patriots to the first perfect regular season since the introduction of the 16-game regular season schedule in 1978, only the fourth team to do so in National Football League history after the 1934 and 1942 Chicago Bears and 1972 Miami Dolphins.
31.
Gary Myers, a columnist for New York's Daily News columnist, stated Bill Belichick should have been suspended by Goodell for the Patriots' next game against the Jets.
32.
The sanctions against Bill Belichick were the harshest imposed on a head coach in league history until the New Orleans Saints' Sean Payton was suspended for the entire 2012 season for covering up a scheme in which bounties were paid for deliberately knocking opponents out of games.
33.
On May 13,2019, Bill Belichick announced that he would assume another role as the Patriots' defensive coordinator starting the 2019 season.
34.
On October 27,2019, with the Patriots' win over the Cleveland Browns, Bill Belichick obtained his 300th win, regular and postseason combined, as a head coach.
35.
The 2020 season was Bill Belichick's first losing season since his first year in New England.
36.
Immediately after the game, Brady and Bill Belichick shared a quick embrace on the field before Brady greeted his former teammates and other members of the Patriots organization.
37.
In doing so, Bill Belichick suffered the worst loss of his coaching career.
38.
Bill Belichick is the most successful coach in Patriots history; his 266 wins with the franchise are more than quadruple those of runner-up Mike Holovak.
39.
Bill Belichick led the Patriots to 17 divisional titles, including five consecutive titles from 2003 to 2007 and eleven consecutive titles from 2009 to 2019.
40.
On December 11,2024, Bill Belichick was named the 35th head football coach of the North Carolina Tar Heels football team.
41.
Bill Belichick was chosen in these roles due to his exceptional knowledge of American football, to the extent that he and fellow former head coach John Madden were specifically assigned to look over film of the earliest players selected to the team.
42.
Bill Belichick was awarded a Sports Emmy in 2021 for his contributions to the series.
43.
Peyton Manning revealed during the Netflix special The Roast of Tom Brady that Bill Belichick would join another ESPN program, joining the Manning brothers in the Manningcast, an alternate live television broadcast of Monday Night Football.
44.
Two of Bill Belichick's players have become NFL or NCAA head coaches.
45.
The track record of Bill Belichick's coaching tree has been characterized as poor.
46.
Bill Belichick received Croatian citizenship on June 3,2024, in Banski dvori in Zagreb from the Croatian prime minister Andrej Plenkovic.
47.
Bill Belichick was special guest of the association football friendly match on Stadion Rujevica between Croatia and North Macedonia.
48.
Bill Belichick was married to Debby Clarke from 1977 to 2006.
49.
In June 2024, it was reported that Bill Belichick was in a relationship with Jordon Hudson, a 24-year-old former cheerleader and 2024 Miss Maine USA pageant first runner-up.
50.
Bill Belichick indicated that he was flattered to be considered for the honor, but declined the award in a statement issued the next day.