Thomas Dimitroff’s take on why the Falcons didn’t hire Bill Belichick
"Let’s call it the way it is."
While Bill Belichick was not hired to be head coach of another team following his departure from the Patriots, it initially appeared that the six-time Super Bowl winner was bound for Atlanta.
Belichick, 71, went through two rounds of interviews with Falcons owner Arthur Blank in January. He was even seen as the likely pick by NFL insider Josina Anderson, who said that she was “expecting” the Falcons to name Belichick “barring a snag in negotiations.”
Yet Atlanta ultimately opted to go in another direction, hiring Raheem Morris (formerly the Rams’ defensive coordinator). It was an unforeseen pivot away from the future Hall of Fame coach.
Exactly why the Falcons didn’t make a push to hire Belichick isn’t publicly known, but a former Atlanta executive who also happens to have history in New England tried to explain what might have happened.
Thomas Dimitroff, the 57-year-old ex-Falcons general manager (a position he held from 2008-2020), recently spoke about the topic during an interview with 98.5 The Sports Hub’s “Felger & Mazz.” Prior to joining the Falcons, Dimitroff had worked his way up in New England to become the director of college scouting.
In his view, Belichick and Blank “had some great discussions” during their two meetings.
“But in the end, there was an inner group in there, right?” he explained of Atlanta’s organization. “Look, anytime Bill goes into an organization, you would assume whatever your thoughts are about him, he deserves the right to run it.”
“Maybe there was a group inside the building who kept pushing back to Arthur,” Dimitroff continued. “Let’s call it the way it is. Any organization wants to keep their world, right? Presidents want to keep their world.”
The ex-Falcons GM elaborated on who he meant by “presidents.”
“You saw the discussion about Rich McKay, right?” Dimitroff explained, referencing the longtime Falcons’ president (now CEO). “Rich is very talented. He knows a lot. The fact that he and Bill would have to work together — or not work together — wasn’t going to happen. And Arthur had made a bold statement saying, ‘That was not an issue.'”
“Bill had said he was going to work ostensibly with Terry Fontenot,” Dimitroff added. “So that wasn’t going to be an issue. But I think everyone looks at it like, ‘Yeah, but when you get someone like [Belichick] in there, it’s going to be overhauled eventually.”
Fontenot is the Falcons’ current general manager, and was retained after former head coach Arthur Smith was dismissed.
In Dimitroff’s view, Blank backed his in-house group over the potential of bringing in Belichick (and all that it might entail in terms of organizational turnover).
“I think, in the end, [Blank] has to make a choice, and he has to make a choice about what he’s looking for in the approach to [the team’s] culture.”
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