Bill Belichick seems to have lost his way.
After years of carefully crafting every narrative, he’s allowed this new one with his 24-year-old girlfriend, Jordon Hudson, to spin out of control. And according to Pro Football Talk’s Mike Florio, he’s now looking for outside answers to his public relations problem.
The North Carolina Tar Heels head football coach is without his longtime PR right-hand man, Berj Najarian, who now serves as Bill O’Brien’s chief of staff at Boston College. As Front Office Sports’ Michael McCarthy notes, this absence appears to be a major factor in Belichick’s struggle to manage headline after headline involving his relationship with Hudson.
In defending his former head coach, Julian Edelman claimed Hudson has been handling Belichick’s PR for him.
That doesn’t appear to be going so well.
Hudson reportedly interrupted the now-infamous CBS Sunday Morning interview multiple times and even stormed off set. Meanwhile, The Athletic revealed she played an “instrumental” role in derailing an HBO Hard Knocks series centered on UNC and has been calling herself the COO of “Belichick Productions,” despite there being no official business filings for the company.
Belichick attempted some damage control this week, releasing a statement defending Hudson and claiming the CBS interview had been “selectively edited” to ignore their agreement to focus on his book. CBS quickly shot down those versions of events. And while Belichick insists his relationship with Hudson is personal and professional, that hasn’t done much to improve the public perception.
So now he’s looking elsewhere.
Florio reports that Belichick has been consulting with at least one seasoned PR expert, hoping to enhance his book tour and bolster the North Carolina football program’s profile, which has taken some hits in the national media over the past week or so.
According to Florio, Belichick’s been in talks with Brandon Faber, the former Vice President of Communications for the Chicago Bears, for several months.
However, as of the writing of this article, no agreements or formal plans have been made.
And based on the fallout from last Sunday’s disastrous interview, Belichick clearly needs PR help now more than ever.
About Sam Neumann
Since the beginning of 2023, Sam has been a staff writer for Awful Announcing and The Comeback. A 2021 graduate of Temple University, Sam is a Charlotte native, who currently calls Greenville, South Carolina his home. He also has a love/hate relationship with the New York Mets and Jets.