Bill Belichick joined the New England Patriots in 2000.
He was supposed to coach the New York Jets, but in full Bill Belichick fashion, he shocked the world by signing with their divisional rivals instead.
Notably, the world has changed a lot since the last time Belichick wasn’t on the sidelines to coach the Patriots.
As pointed out by Bridget Condon on X, there was no social media back then: No Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, or anything like that.
The last time the Patriots took the field without Bill Belichick as their head coach we lived in a world without Twitter, Instagram, Facebook…a new era begins tomorrow.
— Bridget Condon (@BridgetCondon_) September 7, 2024
However, if we take it a little further and review other things that didn’t exist back then, it’s even more surprising.
There were no iPhones or even iPods.
LeBron James was still in high school, and Derek Jeter was about to be named World Series MVP.
Oh, and, of course, Tom Brady was ages from being considered the greatest player in NFL history.
It’s going to be an odd sight not to see Coach Belichick in Foxboro, and the fact that he couldn’t land a job in this hiring cycle was bizarre, to say the least.
Even so, it’s hard to imagine another hiring cycle going by without multiple desperate teams reaching out to him.
In the meantime, he’s going to stay active and busy, and it’ll be interesting to see and hear what he has to say about the game now that he’s not employed by any team.
