The end is nigh for the ruthless, ingenious Bill Belichick. Or is it?

bAiling Belichick was asked again Wednesday morning at a press conference about his future with the New England Patriots — as if he had suddenly spilled the beans and blurted out that he was planning to quit coaching them, or perhaps was planning to take it to a other NFL to move. team in 2024.

When asked if he had talked to the team owner, Robert Kraft, about his job this week, Belichick replied, “Yes, I'm looking forward to working and preparing for the Jets here.”

Don't read too much into the word Yes, because Belichick often initiates such answers as a way of simply acknowledging the question. Moreover, reporters tasked with covering the Patriots have to ask these questions, even if Belichick is all but certain he will sidestep them.

So it's likely that Belichick's coaching future will still be a mystery when the woeful Patriots (4-12) play Sunday's season finale at home against the almost equally woeful New York Jets (6-10) – one of only two NFL games. this weekend between two teams that are out of the playoffs.

Snow is forecast. Since people don't go to football games to say goodbye to coaches, you can buy a ticket to the Patriots-Jets game for just $26 on a resale site. Belichick, 71, has never been much for pomp and circumstance, but this would be a sad way for him to bow out.

Or, given Belichick's storyline, this could be the perfect ending.

Gary Myers, an author who was a longtime NFL columnist for the New York Daily News, thinks Belichick plans to continue coaching — somewhere else, if not in New England — because he has Don Shula's NFL record of 328 regular-season wins as head coach wants to surpass . And, Myers added, Belichick definitely wants to win a Super Bowl without Tom Brady at quarterback.

“Will it be in New England?” Myers told me. “It doesn't seem like it, but nothing would surprise me. Perhaps Kraft will give him a chance to present his plan to resolve matters before a decision is made.”

Belichick would be working on some tricky math. Belichick has 302 wins, and the Patriots would be rebuilding, so matching Shula would cost him at least three or four years if Belichick stayed. Coaches of winning teams don't get fired often, and energetic young head coaches in their 30s and 40s are in style.

Plus, the Patriots have had losing records in four of their last five seasons, so the Hoodie has lost a bit of its feel. It's hard for NFL fans outside New England to feel sorry for a taciturn (and, okay, rule-bending) coach whose teams have won six Super Bowls.

On Tuesday, Belichick told Greg Hill on WEEI Radio in Boston: “Every week you prepare for that week, do your best to help your team win, and then after that game, move on to the next one. And at the end of the season, that's the end of the season.”

He added: “I am committed to the team that I coach now, the players that are here. They deserve the best from me every day, and that's what I'm going to give them.”

He hasn't changed much. Twenty-nine years ago this week, I was sent to Cleveland to write a story about Belichick and the Browns, who had won eleven of sixteen regular-season games in 1994 before losing the Patriots, coached by his mentor, Bill Parcells. sent on his way. a muddy play-off game.

“My job is to win,” he told me. “I don't worry about popularity contests or anything.”

That turned out to be the only playoff game the Browns won in his five seasons as head coach. The 1994 season would also be their only season with a winning record. So Belichick was cast aside and moved to New England as an assistant under Parcells.

Parcells brought him to the Jets when Parcells became their head coach in 1997, and hand-picked Belichick as his replacement after he resigned in 1999. But Belichick stayed on the job for one day and scribbled a letter with the infamous sentence: “I am resigning as HC of the NYJ.”

Columnist Filip Bondy told his readers in the New York Daily News not to worry about Belichick's abrupt and bizarre departure, writing, “After all, he's just a defensive coordinator who lost four of five seasons in Cleveland.” He is not Lombardi.”

Unusually, Belichick wandered around for nearly an hour at a surreal press conference that followed his completely unexpected firing.

On the one hand, he was concerned about his family life. On the other hand, uncertainty surrounding the Jets' new ownership had him taking the open head coaching job at New England. Browns owner Art Modell fired Belichick after announcing he would move the Browns to Baltimore to become the Ravens. Belichick, it was said, hated Modell.

Here's the interesting part, some 24 years later: The Jets would be bought by James Dolan, the cable TV titan who owns the Knicks and Rangers, or by pharmaceutical baron Robert Wood Johnson. Belichick faced more uncertainty up front.

Woody Johnson ultimately won that battle, paying $635 million for a franchise now estimated to be worth more than $6 billion. The Patriots won all those Super Bowls under Belichick – although it should be pointed out that Brady had a lot to do with that.

“I covered Belichick for the Akron Beacon Journal in 1995,” Bart Hubbuch, an old colleague of mine, texted me this week. “He was initially nice to me for replacing one of his mortal enemies, but after Modell announced the move in November, he and the entire organization went to war against the Cleveland media.

“I had no further contact with him until I covered the NFL for the New York Post in 2010, and by then he was in full 'impossible' mode – especially with the New York media. I hated dealing with the modern Belichick. He's just a miserable, vindictive person who went out of his way to make our job as difficult as possible. That Brady really went to his head, because Belichick's record without Brady really shows that he is at best a mediocre coach who got lucky with a generational talent.”

Woody Johnson's property was a dud. The Jets haven't made the playoffs in 13 years, the longest streak ever in the four major North American professional sports leagues. Somehow, to make matters worse, they've lost their last fifteen games to the Patriots.

So Belichick has his own streak to extend into Sunday, even if most of the NFL's attention will be elsewhere. Remember, even though this is the bitter end, the coach that Myers considers the best ever in the NFL wants to do the best he can for his team.

“People want to give all the credit to Brady now, but that's more based on what's happened since they broke up in 2020,” Myers said. “Belichick drafted him in the sixth round when no one else wanted him and then developed Brady into a Super Bowl champion.”