One of the Miami Dolphins' most proud records feels a little safer this morning, but a new threat looms on the horizon entering 2025 NFL season

Maybe Belichick's North Carolina Tar Heels bounce back with a soft-ish schedule and his debut season in Chapel Hill is considered a successful one. Maybe. But it's hard to imagine this iteration of Belichick, who appeared to leave New England just 14 wins short of Shula's all-time wins mark on bad terms with Robert Kraft and the Patriots, closing the season with any level of momentum for a return to the league.

Belichick was given consideration for the Atlanta Falcons job when he first left the Patriots, which could have set the stage for him to further squeeze the gap with Shula. But instead, Belichick took a gap year. He got his hands involved in podcast shows, advising to media companies that turned into football consulting agencies, and everything in between before landing the UNC job.

A gap year and then a retreat to college is one thing. But going to college to undertake rebuilding a program and struggling through the early chapters of said rebuild aren't going to get NFL teams nibbling on the line to offer Belichick a head coaching job again in the pros. Not in the NIL era where some teams are able to completely remake and re-shape their rosters overnight in a single offseason to collect competitive seasons.

Rebuilding a program takes time. Belichick who is 73 years old, doesn't have a lot of it. Not if he wants to capture the lightning in a bottle needed to best Don Shula in the win column. The selling point gets harder and harder each year, when NFL teams want long-term answers and long-term stability in their football operation. Belichick's Tar Heels conceded 48 points on Monday night — a point total that Bill's NFL defenses never conceded. We're running out of gas here, Bill. Shula and the win record should be safe from one of Miami's big, bad rivals since the turn of the millennium.

But not for forever, of course. Kansas City's Andy Reid is next on "Shula Watch". Reid enters the 2025 NFL season with 301 total wins, 46 behind Shula. At the rate of Kansas City's last five seasons of play, it would take Reid three more years to surpass Shula on the all-time wins mark. Let's hope the pace slows down.

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