Bill Belichick back at it with old tricks amid link to Giants job

North Carolina head coach Bill Belichick. Rodd Baxley/The Fayetteville Observer / USA TODAY NETWORK via Imagn Images

North Carolina HC Bill Belichick is back at it with his old tricks amid link to Giants job

By Andrew Kulha | Last updated Nov 11, 2025 9:46 PM ET

North Carolina Tar Heels head coach Bill Belichick once uttered what is now one of the most famous news conference lines in NFL history. It's also incredibly meme-able, which is great for life in 2025.

"We're onto Cincinnati" was the phrase that will live in infamy. It was spoken 15 times in a news conference after Belichick's New England Patriots lost, 41-14, to the Kansas City Chiefs during the 2014 season.

It's not quite at "We're onto Cincinnati" levels, but Belichick was asked about the New York Giants' vacant head-coaching job on Tuesday, and he spit out yet another classic line.

"Getting ready for Wake Forest, that's all I got this week," Belichick said, according to Andrea Adelson of ESPN.

In 2014, the famous phrase represented both Belichick's contentious relationship with the media as well as his one-track mind. He had no more use for a loss that was in the past, and instead, he was focused on the next game. The Patriots won a Super Bowl that season, perhaps not surprisingly.

Bill Belichick discusses Giants HC vacancy

Things are different here in 2025. Namely, Belichick has somehow found himself coaching a college football team and is struggling. The Tar Heels are 4-5, though they have won two in a row, and there's been a media circus surrounding him. From his relationship with 24-year-old Jordon Hudson (Belichick is 73), to her role at North Carolina, to rumors that UNC and the head coach are already talking about a buyout.

It's been very un-Belichick-like. Even his decision to expand more on the topic is something we would never have expected from him in the past.

"I've been asked about it from time to time," Belichick said when asked whether current players or recruits have asked him about returning to the NFL with the Giants. "Look I've been down this road before. I'm focused on Wake Forest, that's it. That's my commitment to this team. This week it's Wake Forest, next week it's that opponent and so forth. I'm here to do the best for this team."

Belichick won two Super Bowls with the Giants as Bill Parcells' defensive coordinator in 1986 and 1990.

Again, none of this jives with the buttoned-up (minus the cutoffs) and closed-off head coach we grew to know in New England. Times have surely changed, and apparently Belichick has as well.

Andrew Kulha

Andrew Kulha is probably the only sports writer you know who also doubles as a mortician. Spooky! @KulhaSports

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