“YOU WANT IT to be one way, but it’s the other way.”

On the same October night Marlo Stanfield uttered perhaps the most famous line in the fabled history of The Wire, Bill Belichick was watching his team secure a routine 38-13 victory over the Cincinnati Bengals.

Both Marlo and Belichick were known for operating with ruthless efficiency and unsentimental pragmatism. And, crucially, both believed that absolute control was the ultimate defensive playbook.

Much like Marlo, Belichick did his time in the trenches, holding six assistant coaching positions in the NFL over nine years, before getting his chance as defensive coordinator with the New York Giants between 1985 and 1990, winning two Super Bowls.

Belichick’s first attempt at being a head coach with the Cleveland Browns provided little foreshadowing of what was to come in his career. Posting a 36–44 record, he had just one winning season. And despite assurances he would remain head coach when the Browns moved to Baltimore and became the Ravens, Belichick was left behind as the team split town.

Two years with the Patriots as defensive backs coach followed, before his now infamous one-day stint as New York Jets head coach. What followed was more than two decades of unprecedented dominance. Between his appointment in 2000 and resignation in January 2024, the New England Patriots won 17 AFC East titles, nine conference championships and six Super Bowls.

But despite possessing a CV even Madden players would blush at, Belichick’s attempts to find another NFL head coaching job proved fruitless. Seven vacancies came, seven vacancies went.

Belichick and Brady won six Super Bowls together at the Patriots. Robin Alam / Image of Sport/Alamy Robin Alam / Image of Sport/Alamy / Image of Sport/Alamy

There were some suggestions that Belichick’s age was a factor; 71-year-olds do not often find themselves on the job hunt. Others pointed to his poor record post-Tom Brady (29-39) and the fact the quarterback had gone on to win a seventh Super Bowl with the unfancied Tampa Bay Buccaneers.

But the reality is more likely that all the traits that made Belichick such a force for so long — holding everyone around him to the highest of standards, an unshakeable belief that he is correct at all times, and a demand for unconditional respect — were now counting against him.

Some foolishly expected Belichick to accept the rejection, pick up a handy TV studio gig and go the way of Terry Bradshaw or Jimmy Johnson: once great football men, who were happy to spend their Sundays remembering the good ol’ times and padding their retirement funds.

Instead, in December 2024, Belichick was named the head coach of the North Carolina college football programme. A traditional basketball powerhouse, the Tar Heels have won more national championships in soccer than they have in American football, so it certainly raised a few eyebrows when Belichick was appointed on a $10m a year contract, with a further $3.5m a year in incentives.

He would lose his first game as head coach 14-48 to Texas Christian University, who play North Carolina again this weekend in the College Football Classic in the Aviva Stadium. It is the most points a Belichick-coached team has ever given up in a game. Indeed, the Tar Heels would finish the season with a 4–8 record, failing to qualify for an end-of-season bowl game for the first time since 2018.

Dublin's Aviva Stadium will host Belichick's UNC against TCU in the College Football Classic this Saturday. Laszlo Geczo / INPHO Laszlo Geczo / INPHO / INPHO

Things weren’t going much better for Belichick off the field either. His personal life was spilling over into the gossip pages for the first time; the 74-year-old’s relationship with 25-year-old Jordon Hudson being the main cause. And worse was to come in January of this year when, despite 333 career wins and six Super Bowls, Belichick was not elected into pro football’s Hall of Fame.

While Belichick is, by any reasonable metric, an obvious first-ballot Hall of Fame candidate, it isn’t hard to find a reason why voters could justify not voting for him. Under his watch, the Patriots had two different -gate suffix scandals (Spy and Deflate), with the former resulting in a $500,000 fine, the largest fine ever given to an NFL coach. Then there’s the aforementioned record without Brady as his quarterback, which is not nothing.

But the reality is likely much more human. Despite his obvious excellence, Belichick’s single-mindedness, his will to win at all costs, rubbed so many people up the wrong way that voters were only too happy to get one back on him as soon as they could.

Like Marlo before him, Belichick is finding out the hard way that legacies are difficult to control. Instead of being the king of the Baltimore crime scene, Marlo ended The Wire asking two corner kids, who clearly did not, “Do you know who I am?”

And instead of wearing his gold jacket on a cosy TV set when the NFL season kicks off in a couple of weeks, Belichick will be on the sidelines in Dublin, hoping his team doesn’t suffer the same level of humiliating defeat as they did against TCU last year.