Nearly 15 months ago, when the Atlanta Falcons passed on Bill Belichick, it was strictly about football business.
His departure from the New England Patriots had come with red flags, and there were Falcons executives who questioned whether Belichick could step out of a single-minded leadership silo and blend into a broader decision-making collective. The concerns were about elements of football, personality and relationships inside the team's building. The one thing nobody really worried about was non-football drama because, for the most part, Belichick was mostly devoid of it. Even when his outside life came into the media’s field of vision, it typically faded back into the background fairly quickly.