Bill Belichick always tried to filter out distractions for the New England Patriots. However, his final few seasons in the NFL may have been an exception.
In an appearance on the Bill Simmons Podcast, journalist Pablo Torre reports that Belichick’s girlfriend Jordon Hudson had a notable presence around Belichick well before their relationship went public. The podcast host, who’s been all over the Belichick-Hudson story, says it goes back to Belichick’s days in Foxborough.
According to Torre, a “fan cam” spotted Hudson sitting in a block of seats that belonged to Belichick all the way back in November 2021. That’s more than two years before Belichick and the Patriots parted ways.
That 2021 season was the last time the Patriots made the playoffs during Belichick’s tenure. Torre didn’t hesitate to connect the dots between Hudson’s presence and the Patriots’ lack of success.
Based on the conversations he had, Torre suggested that Hudson was a distraction during Belichick’s final years in Foxborough.
“By the end, Bill Belichick wasn’t exactly dialed in in the way that even people on the Patriots wanted him to be, from above and below,” Torre said.
Belichick’s tenure in New England wasn’t the only thing impacted by the perception of Hudson. Torre reports that NFL teams were concerned by Hudson when considering Belichick for NFL jobs after the 2023 season.
Torre noted that Belichick attempted to go all-out in “auditioning” for NFL jobs while handling various media gigs in 2023. As Torre noted, those appearances were intentionally boring.
Meanwhile, teams were reportedly wary of what was going on with Belichick behind the scenes.
“They were aware of this, had questions about the Ring cam video,” Torre said. “I don’t think they knew, necessarily, that she was at a game in November of 2021. But I do know that lots of people on the Patriots knew that, that she was around.”
Ultimately, Belichick failed to land an NFL job after leaving New England. Following a year in media purgatory Belichick eventually took the job as the head coach at North Carolina.
Since then, the floodgates have opened in regards to the attention and criticism surrounding him and Hudson.
But as Torre notes, this is nothing new for teams in the know.
