Bill Belichick has spent nearly three years outside the NFL, and the league has given him 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.
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During an appearance on Rich and Ken with Ted Johnson on October 21, NFL insider Adam Schefter went candid on the possibility of seeing Belichick back on an NFL sideline next season.
“I’ve always thought that teams should be interested. The problem is teams haven’t been interested,” Schefter revealed. “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. 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. He said a team could change its mind, noting that a rejection in one hiring cycle does not guarantee a permanent rejection.
“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.
On Monday, former Cowboys scout Gavin Dawson called Belichick the “best-case scenario” if Dallas decides to fire Brian Schottenheimer before the season ends.
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. He believes the team needs the kind of discipline and accountability associated with Belichick to get things back on track.
“This team and organization need someone to reteach the basic fundamentals, to be drilled and killed over situational football,” he said on X.
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.
Belichick’s name is an obvious one to raise when a franchise with championship ambitions struggles. Whether the Cowboys would actually pursue him is another matter.
In 2024, Atlanta interviewed Belichick before hiring Raheem Morris. Since then, no other NFL head-coaching opportunity has materialized for him. That is the history behind Schefter’s comments, and it explains why the possibility of a return remains different from a realistic opening.
Nonetheless, North Carolina has given Belichick a stronger case.
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. 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. The Tar Heels led 17-0, fell behind 20-17 late in the fourth quarter, and scored the winning touchdown with 1:53 remaining. A late interception sealed the result.
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.
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.