Is Bill Belichick still eyeing an NFL return? His UNC contract provides a clue

Bill Belichick is like an ogre. He has layers. So does, as it turns out, his contract at North Carolina.

And as we work to understand Belichick's decision to go to UNC, we can learn from the financial agreement. Because it can help us cut through the crap and see what's real. Let's start with the question that's on everyone's minds: How long will he stay at UNC? Might he still have an eye on the NFL?

"I didn't come here to leave," Belichick said last month at his introductory press conference in Chapel Hill.

His contract, however, tells a different story. 

It's essentially a three-year, $30 million deal. According to the fine print, Belichick starts with a buyout option of $10 million. That's a big number, but not one that would wholly prohibit interested NFL teams from hiring him right now. Think about how teams have taken on $10 million in dead salary cap money to move on from a player. It happens many times a year. But the buyout number drops to $1 million on June 1, 2025. 

That's just a few months from now. 

UNC fired coach Mack Brown and had to pick up his $4 million buyout. So that sum of $1 million is basically nothing. There's no doubt in anyone's mind that, if Belichick wants to leave UNC, either he or his next team will take on $1 million and maybe even $10 million.

The thought was that his initial buyout would take him out of this year's hiring cycle. But reports have surfaced that multiple NFL teams have contacted Belichick to gauge his interest in returning. 

His contract is telling us that maybe he does intend to leave Chapel Hill. 

Soon, maybe.

"He's not a young man by any means, but yes, he does have a contract that would allow him to [leave]," an AFC executive told FOX Sports. 

What are the 72-year-old Belichick's chances of getting back to the NFL? 

An NFL scout is optimistic. "I would think someone would be desperate enough to consider hiring him in the NFL," the scout told me. "[He’d] need an owner that’s willing to give up control."

It's all about wins. Everyone tolerated Belichick's brutal coaching and management style when he was having success. That included Patriots owners Robert Kraft and Jonathan Kraft and the coordinators and the players. They all played along because Belichick brought home Super Bowl trophies and rings. And that meant legacy. 

It also meant money. In most cases, Patriots players could leave and get paid better than their comparable peers, because of their exposure to The Patriot Way. The same was true of Belichick's head coaching tree, which largely failed — but was desirable for a long time because of Belichick-adjacency. All that faded when Tom Brady left and the Patriots started losing. Not even Belichick — the King of Adjustments — could figure out how to win without the Greatest of All Time. That's the question that still hangs over the coach.

Can he win without Brady? 

If he can't, then an NFL team will have to suffer Belichick's slings and arrows for no good reason.

Belichick is making moves to draw talent to UNC (and, by extension, NFL interest). A big part of why the college game might have appealed to him is that he thinks — with help from NIL and the transfer portal — he can turn a program around quickly.

"We're selling the program, but quite honestly, we've had a lot of players and agents coming to us and say, 'We want to be part of the program,' 'Is there a spot for us?' 'Would you take this player, that player?' and so forth,'" Belichick said on "The Pat McAfee Show" last month. 

Belichick's appearances on McAfee's platform — which is enormously popular for high school and college-aged boys — will continue. Everyone was concerned with whether Belichick would be disenchanted with the grind of appeasing young, unproven and demanding prospects. He's off to an energetic start.

"We're spending money, not as much as we spent in the NFL, but tossing around a little bit of money," Belichick said. "I enjoy seeing the players getting compensated for the arrangement that they'll be going into. It's a new landscape in college football, but honestly ... this part of the process is not too different from what we've dealt with in the NFL."

Given what we've seen in the coach's contract, returning to the NFL has to be on Belichick's to-do list. There's too much contractual liberty for him to leave UNC. And he has too much unfinished business. There's the all-time wins record, where Belichick still needs 15 victories to eclipse Don Shula's record.

It's likely Belichick picked UNC because he didn't think he'd get an NFL job this offseason. He thought if he could use college as a platform to sell himself back into the NFL, he could not just get those wins he wants, but also clear the bad reputation he picked up the past few years. Everyone is starting to think Brady is to thank for all those Super Bowls. That's not what Belichick wants. Not one bit. And he was willing to rebuild UNC just to get another chance to close his NFL career on a high note.

But maybe he doesn't even have to do that.

"I didn't come here to leave," Belichick said.

Sorry, Bill. The contract you negotiated says otherwise.

Prior to joining FOX Sports as an NFL reporter and columnist, Henry McKenna spent seven years covering the Patriots for USA TODAY Sports Media Group and Boston Globe Media. Follow him on Twitter at @henrycmckenna.

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