Dallas Cowboys owner Jerry Jones remembers the chance encounter like it was yesterday.
It was February 1996, Jones and the Cowboys had just won their third Super Bowl in four years while Bill Belichick had just been fired by the Cleveland Browns before the franchise relocated and became the Baltimore Ravens. The two men on opposite ends of the football world found themselves at the Snowmass Mountain Ski Resort near Aspen.
“I’ll never forget I was skiing after the season was over,” Jones told reporters back before the Cowboys and Patriots met during the 2019 season. “Somebody bumps up against me a few times and I turn around and it was Bill. He no longer had a job. He had been with Cleveland and they’d let him go up there. He said, ‘Listen, I can coach. If you ever get an opportunity, don’t forget about me.’ I’ve thought about that many times.”
Belichick smiled when he was asked about the meeting that week.
“I was out there with the family and Jerry was easy to spot with the big white jacket and the blue star, coming off a couple of Super Bowl victories,” he said. “Jerry and the Joneses have always been great to me. I’ve always had a great relationship with them…. I have all the respect in the world for Jerry. He’s totally committed to winning. That organization is committed to winning. Stephen [Jones] does a great job with their organization and personnel. I’ve spent a lot of time talking to those guys at various owners’ meetings or workouts.”
In the winter of 1996, Belichick ended up taking a job as the New England Patriots assistant head coach with Bill Parcells. Belichick and Parcells, who had teamed up to win two Super Bowls with the New York Giants, led the Patriots, who had gone a decade without a postseason win, to the Super Bowl during that first season back together. Parcells left to take over the 1–15 New York Jets before the ’97 season; Belichick followed him and the tandem led the Jets to the AFC championship game in their second season in East Rutherford. Belichick became a head coach again with the Patriots, in 2000. Over the next 18 years in New England, Belichick led the Patriots to six Super Bowl titles and is now widely recognized as the greatest coach in football history.
Since meeting at that ski resort 29 years ago, Belichick has coached in 10 Super Bowls and 15 conference championship games while Jones and the Cowboys have failed to get out of the divisional round.
There was never a chance for Jones and Belichick to team up over the past 25 years while Belichick was leading the Patriots to unprecedented heights as the Cowboys struggled to recapture the success the team enjoyed during the 1990s, but that has all changed.
Belichick and the Patriots parted ways last year and while Belichick was recently named the new head coach at North Carolina, CBS Sports reported Thursday that there is not a signed and fully executed contract between Belichick and North Carolina, meaning Belichick could still walk away and return to the NFL.
Meanwhile, the Cowboys parted ways with head coach Mike McCarthy this week after a disappointing 7-10 season, a move many fans were pushing for after the team gave up a franchise-record 48 points in an embarrassing wild-card loss at home to the Green Bay Packers.
Jones and Belichick need each other right now.
For Jones, who will turn 83 this year, he has said he will do anything and pay anything to win one more Super Bowl. “It would be embarrassing, it would be shocking if you knew the size of the check I would write if it guaranteed me a Super Bowl,” Jones said in 2018. “It would be obscene. There is nothing I would do financially not to get a Super Bowl.”
For Belichick, who will turn 73 in April, he is just 15 wins away from passing Don Shula on the NFL’s all-time wins list, including playoffs. (He’s 26 victories back on the regular season wins list.) He doesn’t really want to hit the recruiting trail and take over a below .500 rebuilding program team that hasn't been in the Top 10 since 1996. He wants to stay in the NFL and join a team that can win now.
Those who think Jones and Belichick can’t coexist don’t know their history together and have already forgotten that Jones and Parcells enjoyed a great working relationship together during Parcells’ four seasons as the Cowboys’ head coach; Parcells and Jones are still close to this day. Parcells’ stint in Dallas was the only stop of his head coaching career without Belichick by his side and the only time he failed to get a team to at least the conference championship game.
This isn’t just about Belichick passing Shula in the record books or doing something Parcells couldn’t do. After Tom Brady left New England, the quarterback led the Tampa Bay Buccaneers to a Super Bowl title and three straight postseason berths. Meanwhile the Patriots went 29–38, without a playoff victory, with Belichick after Brady left. There are some who now wonder if more of the credit for the Patriots dynasty belongs to Brady rather than Belichick. As the head coach in Cleveland, Belichick was 36–44 before getting fired and was 5–11 in his first season as the head coach in New England, and started his second season 0–2 before Brady became the full-time starting quarterback.
Leading the Cowboys to their first NFC championship game and Super Bowl since 1996 would make Belichick the first head coach in NFL history to lead two franchises to a Super Bowl championship and cement his place as the greatest coach in football history. It would also be the perfect ending to a story that began nearly 30 years ago at a ski resort when an unemployed Belichick told Jones, “Don’t forget about me.”