SI:AM | End of the Road for Three of Football’s Greatest Coaches

Good morning, I’m Dan Gartland. The sport of football is going to look different next season.

In today’s SI:AM:

???? Carroll out

???? Saban gone

???? Belichick done

Farewell to three legends

Three of the greatest coaches in football history are saying goodbye to their teams.

News broke yesterday afternoon that Pete Carroll was out as coach of the Seattle Seahawks after 14 seasons. Later that evening, Nick Saban retired from his post leading the Alabama Crimson Tide. And early this morning, the New England Patriots reportedly made the decision to “part ways” with Bill Belichick.

Those three have seven Super Bowl championships and eight college national championships between them. They had been three of the longest-tenured coaches in North American sports. Each of their departures is an earth-shattering end of an era. To have all three reach the end of the road less than 24 hours apart is a shock to the system.

The end of Belichick’s time in New England sadly came as no surprise. After three mediocre years following the departure of Tom Brady, the Patriots cratered this season, finishing 4–13. That’s their fewest wins since they went 2–14 in 1992. Belichick was doubly responsible for the team’s struggles. As general manager, he failed to build a quality roster, which made his job as coach all the more difficult.

What is surprising, though, is how Belichick’s exit played out. It had been clear for months that the Patriots needed to make a change. That’s a difficult truth to confront, given how much Belichick has meant to the franchise. It would have been better for the team to announce before last weekend’s finale that it would be Belichick’s last game with the Patriots. Hold a pregame ceremony honoring him and let him get a proper sendoff. Instead, the news broke via a tweet from ESPN’s Adam Schefter and Mike Reiss at 7:03 a.m. ET this morning. The Patriots will hold a press conference today at 12 p.m. ET.

The complicating factor with Belichick is that he clearly wanted to stay.

“I’m under contract. I’m going to do what I always do, which is every day I come in, work as hard as I can to help the team in whatever way I can,” he said in a press conference Monday.

Schefter reports that Belichick wants to continue coaching, and the Patriots are prepared to facilitate a move to another team by allowing Belichick to change jobs freely, even though he is under contract for one more year and New England could require compensation from another team.

While the writing was on the wall for Belichick, Carroll’s departure legitimately came out of nowhere. The Seahawks had back-to-back 9–8 seasons—not fantastic, but certainly respectable in a difficult NFC West. It would have been more understandable if Carroll, who at 72 is the same age as Saban, had decided to retire, but he told reporters yesterday that he wanted to keep coaching. The Seahawks announced that Carroll will be moving into an advisory role in the front office, but Carroll said he still isn’t sure exactly what that job will be.

Saban’s future is more clear. He’s done coaching. There was speculation late in the season that he would retire, but it was still stunning when the news broke. His departure sent shockwaves through college football. Alabama has no compelling internal candidate to hire as Saban’s replacement, so the school will have to poach someone. Current Oregon Ducks coach Dan Lanning (a former Crimson Tide graduate assistant) is one hot name. Dabo Swinney, who played at Alabama in the 1990s and started his coaching career there, is another possibility, as is former Alabama offensive coordinator Lane Kiffin. Whoever replaces Saban will have the most difficult job in the sport. Saban’s unparalleled success has raised expectations in Tuscaloosa to preposterous levels. The Tide finished ranked in the top 10 every year since 2008. They haven’t lost more than two games in a season since ’10. Only Ohio State (10 straight top-10 finishes) has approached that level of excellence. Maintaining that winning presence will pose a formidable challenge for Saban’s successor.

The best of Sports Illustrated

• Nick Saban proved over and over again that he was the best coach college football has ever seen, Pat Forde writes.
• Richard Johnson wrote about how Saban’s adaptability was his most valuable skill.
• Forde and Johnson have a list of eight potential candidates for the Alabama job.
• Greg Bishop paid tribute to Pete Carroll, a unique coach who belonged in “a genre of one.”
• Bishop also wrote about Bill Belichick’s unparalleled legacy with the Patriots.
• The challenge for Belichick at his next stop will be adapting to how the NFL has changed in the more than two decades since he was last looking for a job, Conor Orr writes.
• Albert Breer has an update on potential landing spots for Mike Vrabel.
• Longtime Patriots assistant Jerod Mayo is believed to be the favorite to replace Belichick. Aaron Rodgers is done appearing on The Pat McAfee Show for the rest of the NFL season.

The top five...

… things I saw yesterday:

5. The celebration at Auburn after Nick Saban announced his retirement.

4. Antoine Griezmann’s beautiful goal to become Atlético Madrid’s all-time leading scorer.

3. Victor Wembanyama’s first career triple double (in just 21 minutes of action).

2. Mikko Rantanen’s no-look, between-the-legs assist.

1. UCF fans storming the court after the Knights’ men’s basketball team upset Kansas for the program’s first Big 12 victory.

SIQ

The Knicks held their opponent to fewer than 100 points for the 29th straight game on this day in 2001, breaking a record that had been set in which year?

• 1955
• 1971
• 1984
• 1992

Yesterday’s SIQ: Who is second on the NBA’s all-time blocked shots leaderboard behind Hakeem Olajuwon? (Jan. 10 was the anniversary of when he passed Kareem Abdul-Jabbar.)

• Patrick Ewing
• Dikembe Mutombo
• David Robinson
• Ben Wallace

Answer: Dikembe Mutombo. He had five blocks in the Houston Rockets’ win over the Los Angeles Lakers on Jan. 10, 2007, to give him 3,190 career blocks, one more than Kareem Abdul-Jabbar’s 3,189. He retired with 3,289 blocks in 18 seasons, which still stands as the second most in NBA history behind Olajuwon’s 3,830.

“I’m so excited, so excited,” Mutombo said days before passing Kareem. “I’m really thrilled about becoming one of the great shot-blockers who has played this game. To see myself up with my brother Hakeem Olajuwon, I think it’s a great honor for me. To go into the history books as two African kings who came in and did something very special in this league, it is overwhelming to me and I think very significant.”