Every offseason has its what-if stories, but this one might be the wildest of the bunch. According to ESPN's Seth Wickersham, when Bill Belichick and the Patriots finally split for good in 2024, Sean Payton cooked up a plan so bizarre it sounds like fan fiction: hire Belichick in Denver, let him rack up 15 wins to pass Don Shula's all-time record of 347, then hand the job back.
Per @SethWickersham: When Bill Belichick and the Patriots divorced in 2024, Sean Payton considered presenting Broncos owner Greg Penner a proposal for the ages: Hire Belichick as head coach until he reached 15 wins, enough to break Don Shula's career record of 347. Payton would temporarily step down to assistant head coach and run the offense, then move back after Belichick became the all-time leader. In the end, it was too complicated -- and maybe too fanciful.
The logistics alone are what make this thing so absurd. Payton, the actual head coach of a team he'd just led back to relevance, would've voluntarily stepped down to assistant head coach and offensive playcaller, essentially benching himself so his buddy could chase history in a Broncos uniform. Once Belichick hit win No. 348, the plan called for a swap back, with Payton reclaiming his old chair like nothing happened.
It never got past the idea stage. Per the report, Payton never actually brought it to Penner, deciding it was too complicated and, in his own words, too fanciful to sell to ownership. Which, fair — asking your boss to let you demote yourself for a rival coach's counting-stat quest is a tough pitch no matter how good the friendship is.
Belichick, of course, ended up nowhere near the NFL. He took the North Carolina job instead, and his first season in Chapel Hill was rough by any measure — a 4-8 finish, a blowout loss to TCU to open the year, and the program's first missed bowl game since 2018. Shula's record sits right where it's been for decades, untouched, while Belichick figures out life as a college coach.
For Payton, the story is a reminder of how much juice he's willing to spend on other people's legacies. He kept the Broncos job, kept building around Bo Nix, and Denver's been trending up since he took over. But the fact that this plan got far enough to be considered — and confirmed on the record — says plenty about how much respect Payton still has for Belichick, split or no split.
It also raises the obvious question: does this door ever reopen? Belichick's college experiment is still young, and if UNC doesn't click, the NFL rumor mill will inevitably drag his name back into head-coaching conversations. Whether Payton would ever resurrect a plan this unconventional is another matter entirely — but it's out there now, on the record, for everyone to wonder about.