Did Patriots ban Bill Belichick? Explaining report that UNC head coach is not welcomed in New England

The New England Patriots have seemingly moved on from the Bill Belichick era. Since parting ways with him in early 2024, the team has hired Mike Vrabel as its new coach and added a new quarterback, Drake Maye.

Belichick, who brought six Super Bowls to New England, has moved on as well. He’s in his first season as North Carolina’s coach, trying his hand at college football.

But it appears there may still be some bad blood. According to Belichick, the Patriots have banned their former head coach from team facilities.

Let’s break down the rumors to see what’s true.

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Did Patriots ban Bill Belichick?

Let's back up a bit. This whole thing got started amid reports that North Carolina had banned Patriots staffers from Tar Heel facilities. Via ESPN's Kalyn Kahler on Sept. 4: 

Two NFL scouts who work for other teams told ESPN that North Carolina, under Belichick's leadership, offers limited access to all NFL personnel. Clubs are allowed to speak only with Jourdain, and UNC's college relations website says that "scouts will have zero access to coaches or other personnel people," according to the scouts.

The term "zero access" appears three times on UNC's college relations website, a page accessible only to NFL personnel. 

It appears the rumors of the Patriots banning Belichick were first sparked by the head coach himself. Last Saturday, after the Tar Heels secured their first win over Charlotte, Belichick was asked about reports that New England staffers are unwelcome in Chapel Hill.

"It's obvious I'm not welcome at their facility," Belichick said. "So they're not welcome at ours." 

When Patriots head coach Mike Vrabel was first asked about the apparent UNC ban, he appeared to downplay it. 

 "That's an individual choice and we'll cross that bridge when we start looking at players," Vrabel said. "I'm going to focus on our football team. That's their prerogative to make the decisions that they feel like are the best for them. We'll have to find other ways to get the information for any players that we want to look at at North Carolina."

Following Belichick’s postgame comments after his team’s win over Charlotte, Vrabel clarified that the former Patriots head coach is, in fact, welcome. He pointed to Belichick’s appearance at Tom Brady’s Patriots Hall of Fame ceremony last June as an example.

"Bill came back for, to the best of my knowledge, [to] Tom's ceremony," Vrabel said in his weekly interview with sports radio WEEI, as transcribed by ESPN. "So I guess he's welcomed back based on the fact he was there.

"I'll just go by that -- since his departure as the head coach here, he's been back. I'll leave it at that."

For now, it appears that this is a lot of he-said-he-said. Player evaluations typically ramp up during the winter and spring pre-draft scouting by NFL teams. So this story will likely continue to come up as those begin. 

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Why did Bill Belichick leave the Patriots?

Belichick and the New England Patriots seemed like a perfect match. He was hired by the team in 2000 and won his first Super Bowl with the Patriots in 2001. With Tom Brady at quarterback, New England went on to win six Super Bowls from 2001 to 2018, including three AFC Championships and three additional Super Bowl appearances.

Belichick also earned a reputation as a draft genius. He became known for finding talent in the later rounds and turning players into household names, including Brady, Rob Gronkowski, Julian Edelman, Asante Samuel, and several others.

But after Brady left for the Tampa Bay Buccaneers in 2020, New England’s dominance began to unravel. From 2020 to 2023, the Patriots had just one season above .500. In 2021, New England went 10-7 and lost 47-17 to the Bills in the Wild Card round.

Belichick's draft success also withered, as he took the likes of busts like quarterback Mac Jones, running back Sony Michel receiver N'Keal Harry tight ends Dalton Keene and Devin Asiasi his last five years in New England. 

Despite bringing the Patriots six Super Bowl titles, Belichick and the Patriots announced to mutually part ways in January 2024. 

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Bill Belichick-Robert Kraft relationship

Much like his tenure with the Patriots, Belichick’s relationship with owner Robert Kraft deteriorated in the later years of his coaching career. One of the main sources of tension was, unsurprisingly, Tom Brady. According to multiple reports, Belichick and Kraft struggled over whether to continue with their star quarterback as he aged. Ultimately, both decided to let Brady go in 2020, and he went on to win a Super Bowl with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers in 2021.

"Bill had told me he couldn't play anymore," Kraft said privately after Brady's last Super Bowl win via ESPN., "and then he goes out and wins the f---ing Super Bowl."

Kraft has since admitted that letting Brady go was a mistake. 

Belichick seemingly resumed the beef with Kraft recently, when asked by The Boston Globe about some of the biggest differences between coaching the Patriots and North Carolina. 

“It’s a much more cohesive, and I’d say unified, view of what we’re trying to do and how we’re trying to do it,” Belichick told The Boston Globe’s Ben Volin this week, speaking about the differences between coaching in the NFL vs. college. “It’s a lot of football, and there’s not much in your way.

“There’s no owner, there’s no owner’s son,” he continued. “There’s no cap, everything that goes with the marketing and everything else, which I’m all for that. But it’s way less of what it was at that level.”