Bill Belichick as Vito Corleone, with his consigliere Berj Najarian
It couldn’t be more fitting that Bill Belichick met the man who has long been described as his “consigliere” while working for the New York Jets. Belichick, then the Jets defensive coordinator, met Berj Najarian, who was in the Jets PR department at that time, and made an immediate connection. Belichick took Najarian with him to New England, where they remained tethered for over two decades, not too dissimilar to Don Corleone and Tom Hagen.
Now, with Bill Belichick taking at least one year off from coaching after failing to be hired for any of the openings around the NFL this offseason, Najarian looks poised to join the staff of Bill O’Brien, a longtime assistant to Belichick in New England, at Boston College, according to a tweet from Pete Thamel of ESPN.
(To continue with the comparisons to The Godfather, this would make Bill O’Brien either Michael Corleone or Santino “Sonny” Corleone. We’ll have to wait and see if O’Brien ends up legitimizing the Boston College football program, or if he gets gunned down at a toll booth before we determine which of Vito Corleone’s sons make for the better comparison.)
The expectation is Najarian will become the chief of staff for Boston College’s football program under new O’Brien. Perhaps the job description won’t be too different than what Najarian was expected to do the the director of football/head coach administration. So, what is it exactly that Najarian did for Belichick?
“Najarian handles the logistics of Belichick’s workday,” Boston Globe columnist Dan Shaughnessy wrote in 2019. “He decides who sits where on the team plane. He selects the music for practice. He doles out speaking gigs to assistant coaches if the Patriots are approached by corporations. He combs through all media coverage of the Patriots (an overwhelming tonnage of digital, ink, and radio/TV noise) and decides what Bill needs to see and hear. He seeks out reporters who he believes have been unfair to his boss or the Patriot Way.”
