Bill Belichick leaving New England Patriots after 24 seasons as head coach
(WKBN) – Longtime NFL head coach Bill Belichick and the New England Patriots have mutually agreed to part ways as of Thursday.
Belichick and team owner Robert Kraft announced the move to the media Thursday at Gillette Stadium. They didn't take questions.
Belichick's tenure in New England lasted 24 years, and he is regarded as one of the most successful NFL head coaches of all time and the architect of the most decorated dynasty of the league’s Super Bowl era.
Belichick, 71, is just the third coach in NFL history to reach 300 career regular-season victories earlier this season, joining Hall of Famers Don Shula and George Halas. With 333 wins including the playoffs, Belichick trails only Shula (347) for the record for victories by a coach.
He won a record six Super Bowl titles as a head coach with quarterback Tom Brady. He has the most NFL playoff victories as a head coach (31), and he is the third in regular season wins (302).
Belichick was previously an assistant with the New York Jets and New York Giants. He was also the head coach of the Cleveland Browns from 1991-1996.
Since Brady left the Patriots in 2020, the Patriots have declined under Belichick's direction. In 2023, New England finished with an AFC-worst record of 4-13.
At this time, no announcement has been made regarding whether or not Belichick will coach elsewhere, and it wasn't immediately clear who Kraft will tap to replace the future Hall of Famer.
The only child of a World War II veteran who spent three decades as a Navy assistant coach, Belichick is a football historian with an encyclopedic knowledge of strategy from the sport’s early days to current NFL trends. His players said his attention to detail never left them unprepared.
Belichick has been a master of the NFL rule book, unearthing loopholes in clock operations and offensive line formations that -- though entirely legal -- cemented his reputation as a mad genius.
But his legacy in New England also includes two major cheating investigations — and other, minor ones — that cost him and the team draft picks and more than $1 million in fines. Opponents accused the Patriots of everything from hacking their headsets to cutting corners on injury reports.
His friendship with former President Donald Trump, which Belichick insisted was not political, landed the coach on the list to receive a Presidential Medal of Freedom in the waning days of the administration. After the outcry against the U.S. Capitol siege, Belichick announced “the decision has been made not to move forward.”
The Associated Press contributed to this report.