A BOOK ABOUT FREEZING COLD TAKES. WHAT’S THAT?
Since 2015, I have chronicled unprophetic sports predictions on the internet. My Freezing Cold Takes Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook pages are, together, currently the preeminent digital platform specializing in highlighting incorrect sports prognostications. I have gained little fame and no fortune from the endeavor.
The concept of the Freezing Cold Takes Twitter feed is simple: It features sports quotes, analysis, and predictions from the past—whether from the media or the athletes themselves—that aged poorly or were, in hindsight, simply wrong. The feed’s popularity rests on sports fans’ deep-rooted desire for the media to be challenged on these prior comments. The way fans see it, writers, TV commentators, and radio personalities frequently point out athletes’ and teams’ mistakes, make sweeping declarations about a franchise’s future, demand trades, suggest that coaches be fired, and anoint rookies as Hall of Famers. To sports enthusiasts, since the media consistently dishes out these criticisms, it’s only fair for someone to call them out when their “hot takes” end up being “Freezing Cold Takes.” Enter my humble Twitter feed.
In the hierarchy of journalistic importance, sports media’s “accountability” for their incorrect predictions and commentary is on the lower end of the spectrum. Furthermore, the extent to which a person is held accountable when his or her Freezing Cold Take is spread across social media is hardly very harsh. Yes, sometimes a subject will be ridiculed. As far as I’ve seen, the criticism and fun-poking have never had the slightest effect on a media figure’s career.
A Freezing Cold Take can be a tweet from five years ago or a newspaper article from 1850. It can be about any topic and can be disseminated in any medium. One of the most common forms of Freezing Cold Takes arises from media predictions about a specific game. For example, in 2008, a majority of journalists and TV personalities produced Freezing Cold Takes when they predicted the New England Patriots, as 12-point favorites, would defeat the New York Giants in Super Bowl XLII in February 2008. The Giants pulled off one of the biggest upsets in NFL history and won 17–14.
A prediction is not the only type of commentary that can turn into a Freezing Cold Take. Another is subjective analysis about a player or team, whether in relation to the NFL Draft or any other time during or after the season. Consider any of the NFL Draft analysts in 1998 who opined that the Indianapolis Colts should have selected star college quarterback Ryan Leaf with the No. 1 overall pick in the NFL Draft over the other top quarterback prospect, Peyton Manning. In hindsight, many analysts probably regret that they suggested Leaf, whose NFL career was infamously terrible, while Manning, as the signal-caller, led the Colts to a Super Bowl win in 2007 and was recently inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame.
As one could guess, most media folks aren’t thrilled when their old, inaccurate commentary is spread around the internet and mocked. But, surprisingly, that is not the primary grievance. It is that ridiculed past quotes don’t usually contain enough context and do not fairly capture the circumstances surrounding the analysis at the time it was presented. The author of the ill-fated commentary often feels that any sound rationale used to come to his or her original conclusion is lost in the shuffle, and he or she is made to look like a complete absentminded fool. The appropriate context could provide the sportswriter with some sort of shame mitigation.
Generally speaking, the context that surrounds statements and ideas is a casualty of the digital age and the rise of social media. Thoughts expressed through social media platforms are more often shorter in length and contain less depth than those of traditional media, like newspapers. As ideas and thoughts are framed into shorter constructs, part of the context that supports them are carved out. Unless a reader has an independent awareness of the circumstances surrounding a remark, it may be impossible to fully understand the thought process behind why it was made.
With this book, I wanted to deviate from simply posting collections of Freezing Cold Takes in short, abridged quotes and passages. My aim here is to spotlight (okay, and mock in good humor) some of the most infamous NFL-related Freezing Cold Takes throughout history, and provide the appropriate context as to why they were made. While the Freezing Cold Takes in each chapter (and, in most cases, there are many) are interesting standing alone, exploring the circumstances that may have led to the ill-fated commentary is, in my opinion, just as or even more fascinating.
Keep in mind that not all quotes and statements in each story are Freezing Cold Takes. I have also included some accurate and prophetic commentary in various chapters, which also add context.
The stories offer a unique dive into NFL history from a different perspective than you might be used to. I hope you have as much fun reading it as I did writing it.
—Fred Segal, 2022
On January 4, 2000, Bill Belichick stood in front of the media at the New York Jets’ facility in Hempstead, New York, and announced that he was quitting as head coach of the team. It was a position for which he hadn’t even been formally introduced. Belichick, the team’s defensive coordinator and associate head coach under Bill Parcells for the previous three seasons, had become the Jets head coach two days earlier after Parcells, following a disappointing 8–8 season, told team president Steve Gutman he was retiring. The six-year contract that Belichick had signed with the team in 1997 provided that he would become the Jets’ head coach as soon as Parcells left. Thus, Belichick’s naming was automatic.
“I’VE DECIDED TO RESIGN AS THE HC OF THE NY JETS”
Just prior to stepping to the podium, Belichick handed Gutman a piece of lined white paper stating, among other things, “I’ve decided to resign as the HC of the NY Jets.” He cited the uncertainty of team ownership as the main reason for his departure. Owner Leon Hess had passed away eight months earlier, and his family was selling the franchise. While Hess and Belichick had been on good terms (Hess had even given him a $1 million bonus the year before in order to fend off potential suitors), he had no relationship with any of the potential buyers.
Many did not buy Belichick’s “uncertainty of ownership” excuse. The Patriots were looking for a new coach, and Parcells and the Jets brass had become aware that New England had a strong interest in hiring Belichick. Just before Parcells stepped down as Jets coach, the Patriots had requested permission from the Jets to speak with Belichick about becoming their head coach and general manager. However, Parcells’s abrupt departure had rendered the Patriots’ request unworkable, because as soon as Parcells resigned, Belichick became the Jets’ head coach contractually.
Belichick’s brisk change of heart wasn’t just a simple case of cold feet. The decision was a product of a complex situation that emanated from bitterness between Belichick, Parcells, and Patriots owner Robert Kraft, who had productive but complicated histories with each other.
At the center of the rancor was the acrimonious fallout from Parcells’s leaving the Patriots three years earlier to coach the Jets. Parcells was the Patriots’ head coach from 1993 to 1996. From nearly the moment Kraft bought the team in 1994, the two continuously butted heads. In 1996, Belichick was New England’s defensive coordinator under Parcells. However, in contrast to Parcells, he developed a good relationship with Kraft.
In January 1997, after the Patriots lost Super Bowl XXXI to the Packers, Parcells made his intent clear to the organization that he wished to leave and take the head coaching job with the Jets. Since Parcells still had a year left on his contract, Kraft refused to release Parcells unless he received adequate compensation. NFL Commissioner Paul Tagliabue stepped in and ruled that because the Jets didn’t own Parcells’s rights, they could not hire him without the Patriots’ permission. After weeks of unsuccessful negotiations, Tagliabue stepped in to arbitrate and eventually ruled that the Jets had to give the Patriots four future draft picks, including a first-rounder in 1999, in return for the termination of Parcells’s contract by the Patriots. The Jets then hired Parcells. Belichick followed him and was installed as the Jets’ defensive coordinator.
Three years later, when Belichick announced his resignation, he still had three years remaining on his $1.4 million-a-year contract with the Jets. Thus, there was no certainty that he would be legally able to negotiate with any other team. But two things were starting to become clear: First, Belichick did not want to remain with the Jets, and second, he coveted the Patriots’ job.
One of Belichick’s prime concerns about the Jets job was that he would not have the same level of control in New York as he would in New England. After his resignation, Parcells remained with the Jets as their director of football operations. Despite Parcells’s assurance that Belichick would have unfettered control over football decisions, Belichick was unsure of Big Bill’s role. It is easy to assume that he did not want Parcells breathing down his neck. Bob Glauber, a longtime columnist for Newsday, had known Belichick since he was the defensive coordinator of the Giants in the 1980s. “He bristles under that kind of power above him,” Glauber said in 2020. “Especially… [with] an opportunity to kind of run the show in New England.”
“[BELICHICK] SHOULD BE DONE AS A HEAD COACH IN THE NFL, NOW AND FOREVER”
Many in the sports media skewered Belichick after his abrupt resignation. The day after his infamous press conference, Belichick was featured on the front page of the New York Post sports section with a picture of him on the podium under the headline “BELICHICKEN.” Post columnist George Willis professed that Jets fans should “be breathing a sigh of relief,” and were “very fortunate” because Belichick proved he wasn’t man enough to fill Parcells’s enormous shoes. Willis wrote, “If the Patriots want Belichick as their head coach, and he wants to go there, good riddance.” Sports Illustrated’s Peter King thought Belichick “[broke] a contract he had no business breaking,” and that his actions were “despicable and totally without honor.” Hartford Courant columnist Jeff Jacobs also questioned Belichick’s inner fortitude. “That yellow line isn’t the lane-divider on I-95 Northbound,” he wrote. “It’s the color of Belichick’s backbone.” A few weeks later, after Johnson & Johnson heir Woody Johnson had completed his purchase of the Jets, Jacobs wrote, “Do you think he can spare a little powder for Bill Belichick’s diaper? Me thinks he soiled it when called to replace a legend.”
Adrian Wojnarowski, now one of the most powerful and respected NBA reporters in the world, then a columnist at the Record, based in North Jersey, thought that Belichick did the Jets a favor by quitting. “Better they find out now, than [Jets president Steve] Gutman traipsing back to the podium with the same bewildered expression to announce his dismissal in two years,” Wojnarowski wrote. “Belichick belongs in the darkened caves of film rooms, where he never, ever has to be responsible for a franchise.” Ian O’Connor, in the (Westchester, New York) Journal News, echoed a similar sentiment. He called Belichick “a weasel of the worst kind,” and declared that he “should be done as a head coach in the NFL, now and forever.”
Belichick’s first head coaching job was with the Cleveland Browns from 1991 to 1995. It was considered a failure, as he went 37–45 and was fired. He had ruffled fans’ feathers with some of his roster moves (including releasing beloved quarterback Bernie Kosar) and constantly clashed with the media. Many of the Browns players didn’t enjoy playing for him. “He was more negative than anything,” Anthony Pleasant, a Browns defensive end under Belichick in Cleveland told the Hartford Courant many years later. “Guys would hate coming to work because of the atmosphere.”
People familiar with Belichick’s tenure in Cleveland were befuddled that he was such a hot commodity. In the Dayton (Ohio) Daily News, Greg Simms wrote: “I suspect he’s the same little guy who is not ready for the big time.” In a column skewering Belichick for his disloyalty, immaturity, and blatant disrespect shown to his mentor Parcells, Akron Beacon Journal scribe Terry Pluto, wrote that “The amazing thing is not that Belichick turned his back on the Jets. Rather, it’s that any team wants to hire him at all.”
New York Daily News columnist Filip Bondy was surprised as well. “Consider Belichick little more than a contested terrain in the ground war between Parcells and Kraft,” Bondy wrote. “He is, after all, a mere defensive coordinator who suffered four losing seasons out of five as head coach of Cleveland. He’s not Lombardi.” Glauber, in Newsday, lamented how Belichick had “blown it.” “He had the perfect opportunity with the perfect team, in the perfect city… to emerge from Parcells’ formidable shadow.” In the Record, columnist John Rowe wrote that the Jets should be relieved that Belichick didn’t want to be their coach. “Even if Parcells doesn’t return to the sidelines,” Rowe explained, “they will be able to find someone better than Belichick.”
Kraft told Sports Illustrated in 2017 that Modell warned him that if he hired Belichick, he’d be “making the biggest mistake of [his] life.” Kraft also admitted that there were “people at the highest level of the league” telling him not to hire Belichick. “Nobody thought it was a good idea,” Kraft said. He even had media people sending him videotapes of a couple of Belichick’s press conferences in Cleveland as purported evidence of the coach’s lack of communication skills.
“WHY ANY TEAM WOULD WANT TO HIRE THIS MAN AS A HEAD COACH IS BAFFLING”
As soon as he walked off that podium in Hempstead during that first week of 2000, Belichick immediately began his quest to join the Patriots. With the NFL prohibiting any team in the league from speaking with him, Belichick filed a grievance to attempt to have his Jets contract voided. Meanwhile, columnist Dan Pompei scorched Belichick in the Sporting News. “Why any team would want to hire this man as a head coach is baffling,” he wrote. Pompei also hypothesized that Belichick was a coaching testament to the “Peter Principle,” a theory which states that, in any hierarchy, a person tends to rise to the level of his incompetence. “Just because Belichick is a great defensive coordinator doesn’t mean he can be an effective head coach.” Another national journalist, Peter King, thought, like Pompei, that the Patriots should move their search in a different direction. “If I’m… Bob Kraft,” King wrote on Sports Illustrated’s website, “I have to say no to Bill Belichick now.” King didn’t understand why the Patriots would consider bargaining with the Jets and potentially give up a high Draft pick for a coach with a career record of 37–45. “[Former Carolina Panthers head coach] Dom Capers [sounds] good to me,” he wrote. Garry Brown, a columnist for the Springfield, Massachusetts daily, the Union-News, had similar thoughts. He decried Kraft for letting Parcells get away in 1997 and surmised that he would potentially be making another mistake in hiring Belichick. “Kraft could be headed for yet another blunder,” Brown wrote. “That would be the hiring of Bill Belichick as his new head coach… Belichick appears to be a [previous Patriots head coach Pete] Carroll type—well suited to be an assistant coach, ill-suited to be the head man.”
Eventually, after several legal attempts by Belichick to extricate himself from his Jets contract had failed, Parcells and Kraft put their differences aside and struck a deal. The Patriots gave up a package of draft picks, including the Patriots’ first-round pick (No. 16 overall) in the 2000 Draft, to the Jets, solely for the right to sign Belichick. On January 27, 2000, New England introduced Bill Belichick as their new head coach.
“PARCELLS SNOOKERED BOB KRAFT AGAIN… [I] WOULDN’T HIRE BELICHICK TO RUN A BURGER KING”
Immediately, questions arose about whether Belichick was worth the first-round pick the Patriots had surrendered. “I’m kind of a little surprised,” said ESPN analyst Ron Jaworski. “Giving up a No. 1, I think is a lot… I would think there were other qualified coaches out there so you don’t have to give up a No. 1, who should be a Pro Bowl player.” In the (Rochester, New York) Democrat and Chronicle, columnist Bob Matthews wrote, “I’d give up the no. 16 pick overall in the draft for Bill Parcells, but I wouldn’t give up the 61st pick for Bill Belichick.” Boston-based radio host Ted Sarandis was convinced that “Parcells snookered Bob Kraft again,” and that he “wouldn’t hire Belichick to run a Burger King.” The Boston Herald’s Karen Guregian, in a column to which she now refers as “one of the most idiotic things I’ve ever written,” enumerated NFL coaches she thought were worth first-round picks. Among them: Vince Lombardi, George Halas, Paul Brown, Bill Parcells, Joe Gibbs, Don Shula, Chuck Noll, Tom Landry, and Bill Walsh. Belichick, she concluded, was not on their level. “Sorry folks. Bill Belichick does not fit the mold. He is not in that coaching stratosphere,” she proclaimed. Ian O’Connor, in a Journal News column, wrote that Belichick was “a man you wouldn’t want running your $2 hot dog stand,” and that he thought the Patriots would regret hiring him. “Soon enough,” O’Connor added, “the Patriots will discover that they did bad business. They hired a head coach with a losing record and personality to match.”
“BILL PARCELLS JUST COST THE JETS A COUPLE OF CHAMPIONSHIPS, BY SCARING OFF THE BEST COACH IN FOOTBALL”
Of course, hindsight shows us that in hiring Belichick, the Patriots made the best business decision in the history of the franchise—possibly the history of the league. “It’s turned out to be probably the greatest trade in NFL history,” Guregian said in 2020. While technically it wasn’t a trade, it is hard to argue with her sentiment. The 2021 season was Belichick’s 22nd in New England. During that time, the Patriots have amassed a 254–99 regular-season record, as well as a 30–12 playoff record. They have also won nine conference titles and six Super Bowls during his tenure with the team.
In a 2017 interview with the Boston Globe, O’Connor said he believes that Belichick is the greatest NFL coach of all time and admits his mistakes from 2000. “I didn’t think he had the human relations skills to lead an organization,” O’Connor said. With respect to his initial assessment of the hire, he feels his column after the Patriots hired Belichick is “probably the worst article I have ever written.” In a twist of fate, in 2018, he published a book titled Belichick: The Making of the Greatest Football Coach of All Time about Belichick’s rise to legendary coaching status. The irony is not lost on him. “I’m fascinated by how he became what he became. My penance.” Guregian has also come to terms with her ill-fated column. She now believes that “Belichick has probably jumped ahead” of all the great coaches she listed as worthy of a first-round pick.
Bondy formally admitted his mistake when, in Belichick’s fifth season, the Patriots were preparing for their third Super Bowl appearance. He wrote a column in the New York Daily News calling himself a “moron” and a “knucklehead” and wrote that if he were granted a do-over, he would pursue an angle that read something like “Bill Parcells just cost the Jets a couple of championships, by scaring off the best coach in football.” Bondy posited that Parcells still being on staff with Belichick was actually a valid and legitimate concern, writing that Parcells “did no favors with his post-coaching administrative career,” which was brief and unproductive. He continued: “Who wanted this guy Parcells hanging around, forever threatening by his mere existence to overshadow and undermine the next head coach? Certainly not Belichick.”
The Cleveland Plain Dealer’s Bill Livingston, who covered Belichick when he was coach of the Browns, seemed to understand this from the beginning. “Parcells, who remains with the Jets as a ‘consultant,’ would get all the credit for victories and none of the blame for defeats,” he wrote in January 2000, right after Belichick resigned from the Jets. “Big Tuna would have been looking over [Belichick’s] shoulder, and it is unduly stressful laboring for a boss with a clue.”
Glauber said that his piece the day after Belichick’s 2000 Jets resignation press conference was one of the most conflicted he has ever written and, because he was so surprised, he didn’t know what to think. “It was one of the most abrupt, stunning, weird moments that I’ve ever had in covering sports for more than 40 years.”
Reflecting over 20 years later, Bondy believes his lack of knowledge of the NFL may have handicapped him a bit in covering this situation. “I would be the first one to admit I have never been an expert on American football,” he recalled in 2020. “During my long career, I was never [a full-time beat writer] in the NFL, so my bad take on this issue should come as no surprise.”
Perhaps Bondy’s most prescient point in his 2005 mea culpa piece, which many would probably argue still holds merit, is that the media, with all their opinions and access, are still heavily insulated from many of the major issues that affect the decision making of a franchise and its staff and that, as readers, we should take their opinions with a grain of salt. He wrote, “If there was any proof that the media know next to nothing about the layered vagaries and trade secrets of professional football, it was their nasty farewell to a future Hall of Fame coach.”