Put a Ring on It: Debunking the Myth of Bill Belichick's Consigliere

Carolina football GM Mike Lombardi likes to talk about himself as a three-time Super Bowl champion operating an NFL team in college. But not all Super Bowl rings are created equal. Correspondent (and UNC dad) David Fleming joins Pablo to fact-check the $1.5 million man, for a roadmap to how the Belichick administration became such a (taxpayer-funded) disaster. • Order David Fleming's book, "A Big Mess in Texas: The Miraculous, Disastrous 1952 Dallas Texans and the Craziest Untold Story in NFL History": https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250374301/abigmessintexas https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250374301/abigmessintexas/ (Pablo Torre Finds Out is independently produced by Meadowlark Media and distributed by The Athletic. The views, research and reporting expressed in this episode are solely those of Pablo Torre Finds Out, and do not reflect the work or editorial input of The Athletic or its journalists.) Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy https://acast.com/privacy for more information.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Pablo Torre?

  Welcome to Pablo Torre Finds Out. I am Pablo Torre and today we're going to find out what this sound is.

• 0:06Speaker 01

  I'll jump on the wagon a little bit just because I don't like him using, you know, the fact that he was part of the 49er organization and all they did was cook it sandwiches, right?

• 0:16Pablo Torre?

  Right after this ad.

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• 1:15Pablo Torre?

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• 2:00Pablo Torre?

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• 2:24Pablo Torre?

  This is a different sort of North Carolina football investigation. Dave Fleming, thank you for being here, by the way.

• 2:29Speaker 04

  My pleasure. Thanks for having me back.

• 2:31Pablo Torre?

  You are not merely a seasoned PTFO correspondent. You're not merely a longtime NFL reporter with a new football book out yourself this month.

• 2:41Speaker 04

  Ta-da.

• 2:41Pablo Torre?

  That's right. Put that away. It's not the book we're here to talk about. You're also a North Carolina resident.

• 2:47Speaker 04

  And taxpayer, yes.

• 2:49Pablo Torre?

  And taxpayer, who has been quietly spending this particular college football season on a top-secret assignment for us, because you are also, most crucially, what?

• 3:00Speaker 04

  The proud father of a Tar Heel senior, Kate Fleming. And we both want to know why you hate me so much, Bob. That's what we really want to know.

• 3:11Pablo Torre?

  Hold on, hold on. I thought that sending you on an assignment to go watch Carolina with your child would be a joy.

• 3:19Speaker 04

  Yeah, what do you think? It's like the Flemings team up to do an investigation for PTFO. And it seemed like it was going to be great for about three minutes. But Kate and I actually, and my wife Kim, attended the first game, the TCU game.

• 3:36Pablo Torre?

  The season opener.

• 3:36Speaker 04

  Right.

• 3:37Speaker 05

  The walk that seemed unimaginable. After nearly half a century of unprecedented success at the professional level, Bill Belichick, on his freshman opening day, head coach of the North Carolina Tar Heels.

• 3:53Speaker 04

  Getting to see her experience a true football Saturday, which has not happened a lot in Chapel Hill. It felt like an SEC game, right? There, people were excited. They're out. Everyone's going to the stadium together.

• 4:06Pablo Torre?

  The hype, of course. For those who fell asleep, the hype was unprecedented for Carolina football.

• 4:14Speaker 05

  Leave it with Hood. Hood for the goal line straight. And goes in standing up, touchdown heels.

• 4:20Speaker 04

  And I got to see this through Kate's eyes.

• 4:22Pablo Torre?

  Right.

• 4:22Speaker 04

  It's like father, daughter, we get to sort of enjoy college football together.

• 4:27Pablo Torre?

  Right.

• 4:27Speaker 04

  And they march down the field and they score and we're like, oh my God, is this happening? And then I know there have been a lot of different ways for people to explain how this went off a cliff so fast.

• 4:40Speaker 05

  Got to get it to the 29 on third down. Lopez with the outside and it's intercepted and it's going to be a walk-in touchdown for the veteran Bud Clark.

• 4:51Speaker 04

  I will tell you, I turned to Kate before the end of the first half and she was on reformation.com shopping for dresses with Kim. And I was like that as people were filing out of the stadium.

• 5:04Pablo Torre?

  Your family was like, we're actually mentally not even here anymore.

• 5:07Speaker 04

  Yeah, it was only because I asked them to stay. Did we sort of gut it out?

• 5:11Pablo Torre?

  And then not only that, you came back for more because I made you go to the Clemson game.

• 5:15Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 5:16Speaker 05

  This will be the last play in all likelihood on the double move. Room service touchdown Randall.

• 5:23Speaker 06

  And this has been the worst first quarter that Carolina has played defensively all year long.

• 5:29Speaker 04

  It wasn't just bad football, which people have seen a lot in Carolina. Kate was embarrassed, right? She was embarrassed, not that they were losing football games. It was that Belichick and his girlfriend on the sidelines and the fact that now Carolina is sort of this running joke. And that they've spent so much money embarrassing the school and embarrassing Kate.

• 5:52Pablo Torre?

  Bill Belichick, as I often say, is the highest paid public employee at $10 million a year. Michael Lombardi, his general manager, is the highest paid general manager at $1.5 million a year. That's in all of college football and he is the sixth highest paid public employee in your state.

• 6:11Speaker 04

  No matter how they perform.

• 6:13Pablo Torre?

  They both have guaranteed three-year contracts, all in, by the way. They made, according to The Athletic, what amounts to a $59.3 million bet on Bill Belichick to this administration, which is otherwise known, as previously reported, as the 33rd NFL team.

• 6:29Speaker 05

  Everything we do here is predicated on building a pro team. We are, we consider ourselves the 3013 because everybody's involved with our program has had some form of aspect in pro football and most.

• 6:39Pablo Torre?

  But the focus of our episode today, the reason you were boots on the ground. At those games is because the football person Bill Balachek is closer to than anyone else in the world at this point, I am very, very confidently told, is the aforementioned Michael Lombardi. And Mike Lombardi, to just give the resume here for a second, when he's not fundraising or trying to, in Saudi Arabia, two weeks before Dave Fleming and Kate Fleming show up to go watch TCU blow the [bleep] doors off of Carolina, he is, according to his own resume, a three-time Super Bowl winner.

• 7:19Pablo Torre?

  A guy, by the way, with the last name Lombardi, which, you know, to fact-check that immediately, he is not related, but nonetheless, gotta imagine that that doesn't hurt. A former NFL GM, a longtime media figure, and like us, podcaster, but more than anything else, he is what?

• 7:41Speaker 04

  He really fancies himself a writer. Not just a writer, a writer's writer, an author.

• 7:47Pablo Torre?

  An author. He does, in fact, have a book that he wrote in 2018 called?

• 7:54Speaker 04

  Gridiron Genius.

• 7:56Speaker 05

  Penguin Random House Audio presents Gridiron Genius, a masterclass in winning championships and building dynasties in the NFL. This is the author, Michael Lombardi. For Millie, my summer.

• 8:10Speaker 04

  How Michael Lombardi, if you're wondering, got to be one of the highest-paid employees in my state and the highest-paid GM in football, is this sort of mythology and credentials that he's created through Gridiron Genius?

• 8:27Pablo Torre?

  What this book does is it establishes the legend, the resume, the character of Michael Lombardi. He is the only person. Apparently, who has worked for three truly iconic NFL figures.

• 8:43Speaker 04

  Yeah, Bill Walsh, Al Davis, Bill Belichick.

• 8:48Pablo Torre?

  I should point out that this is only one of the ways in which you can consume Mike Lombardi. Because the other way, of course, is the way that went viral recently during this college football season, when his recruiting prowess has been on full display. Because his writing process, it turns out, was very evident on TikTok.

• 9:08Speaker 05

  So I'm just working on my to-do list, but I do it on the typewriter because it forces me to slow down. I have to think about what I want to write about, and the typewriter gives you that rhythm that you need to be able to slow your mind down and think.

• 9:24Pablo Torre?

  And you know the number one rule of writing, which is if you're gonna write, you need to do it physically as loud as possible.

• 9:30Speaker 04

  It's more important to look like a writer, right? And to act like a writer.

• 9:34Pablo Torre?

  How dare you.

• 9:34Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 9:35Pablo Torre?

  How dare you.

• 9:35Speaker 04

  The words will take care of themselves, as long as you mimic being a writer or an author.

• 9:40Pablo Torre?

  And something you should know about the typewriter is that it's not his only typewriter.

• 9:45Speaker 04

  No, the he-

• 9:45Pablo Torre?

  Apparently.

• 9:46Speaker 04

  No, he collects typewriters.

• 9:48Speaker 05

  How many typewriters do you have? You said you collect typewriters? That I understand like regular? Uh, yeah, I have, uh, I probably have like six. Really? You have a prized one? Yeah, bro. You know the one that was on Twitter that she wrote? You know, the one that just- Stop it. No, you did not. Oh, yeah, I had that one. Now that one, that's on Twitter.

• 10:05Speaker 04

  Well, you know, it was my taxpayer money paying for it, so it's fine.

• 10:09Pablo Torre?

  Well, we don't know when he bought the typewriter.

• 10:10Speaker 04

  Right, but the price is no object.

• 10:12Pablo Torre?

  So I just want to shout out your daughter Kate for taking that video. Attending the Weekly Coaches Show in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. But the thing that I want to point your attention to, if you're not watching on YouTube, which you should be, obviously, is that above his typewriter in this video, there's also this quote.

• 10:29Speaker 04

  This quote from Bill Walsh, the famous Bill Walsh, the iconic Bill Walsh, the architect of the 49ers dynasty in the 1980s and a Hall of Famer. His saying was, "Champions behave like champions before they are champions."

• 10:45Pablo Torre?

  Michael Lombardi, he loves, like, a parable.

• 10:49Pablo Torre?

  He loves to tell you a story that's like a life lesson in it.

• 10:52Speaker 04

  Yeah, and in particular, he loves the idea, the metaphor, the parable of things that look like something, but are actually something else.

• 11:02Speaker 05

  I think what you see with Jared Goff is a little bit like, there's two kinds of snakes that you come across. There's Texas coral snake and the Mexican milk snake. They both look exactly alike. But the Texas coral snake is dangerous. It's venomous. It can kill you in a minute. The Mexican milk snake can't do anything to you. It's an imposter. Jared Goff's just a nice guy throwing the ball around. He's the Mexican milk snake. Dak Prescott, he's the Texas coral snake.

• 11:27Speaker 04

  Boy, he nailed that on Goff, didn't he? Just dead to rights.

• 11:32Pablo Torre?

  And so what we did, the two of us, was devote our time to talking to dozens of sources, enlisting them in the service of fact checking the legend, the resume, the character of Michael Lombardi, actually interrogating what's true, what's not, what in this book specifically, "Gridiron Genius: A Masterclass in Building Teams and Winning at the Highest Level", what in this could be our roadmap to understanding why the [bleep] the Belichick administration, this taxpayer-funded administration and experiment and process is so disastrous, worse than even the most proud UNC dad would have ever imagined?

• 12:14Speaker 04

  Oh, oh my God, and that's Kate.

• 12:16Pablo Torre?

  Why is Kate calling?

• 12:17Speaker 04

  Oh my God, I'm so sorry. That's funny.

• 12:19Pablo Torre?

  Wait, wait.

• 12:19Speaker 04

  Should I answer it?

• 12:20Pablo Torre?

  Yes, answer it.

• 12:21Speaker 04

  Oh my God.

• 12:23Speaker 04

  Hi, Fuch. We're literally taping your-

• 12:27Pablo Torre?

  Kate, your dad's podcasting.

• 12:28Speaker 04

  We're literally taping your show as we speak.

• 12:34Speaker 04

  I'm so sorry. We just played your undercover video. Oh my God.

• 12:39Pablo Torre?

  All right, guys.

• 12:40Speaker 04

  Yeah, sorry.

• 12:41Pablo Torre?

  As much as this is "Take Your Child to Work Day", although I guess-

• 12:46Speaker 04

  Kinda. Love you, love you.

• 12:48Pablo Torre?

  I should explain that that was entirely spontaneous.

• 12:50Speaker 04

  Wow, that was bizarre.

• 12:51Pablo Torre?

  And now that I think about it, it kind of is "Take Your Child to Work Day".

• 12:54Speaker 04

  Yeah. I think she was, she wanted to know where she was getting paid, I think. She wants, she's like, "Where's my check, old man?"

• 13:22Pablo Torre?

  So the focus of this episode is Michael Lombardi's NFL career. And so that means that we're not going to begin with UNLV, where he was the recruiting coordinator, Flem, from 1981 to 1984, the last time he worked in college, before getting hired as the highest paid general manager in college football.

• 13:38Speaker 04

  Yeah, no big deal.

• 13:39Pablo Torre?

  The present tense. All you gotta know about UNLV for now, I suppose, is that they had to retroactively forfeit 18 wins in the 83 and 84 seasons because seven of their recruits, their players, were ineligible. Michael Lombardi was, again, the recruiting coordinator. But for now, I digress. Because where did Mike Lombardi, young Mike Lombardi, go next?

• 14:03Speaker 04

  From 1984 to 1987, he worked on the staff and at the foot of Bill Walsh, the architect of the 49ers dynasty, three-time Super Bowl champ, an organizational guru.

• 14:17Pablo Torre?

  Yes, Mr. West Coast Office.

• 14:18Speaker 04

  The West Coast is, if you're a football nerd, the last great innovation in NFL offenses. So really, there's no more respected authority.

• 14:28Pablo Torre?

  He's a great idol, a great mentor to have. And the thing about what Mike Lombardi says in Gridiron Genius is that he personally, Lombardi, is distinguished by his direct access to Bill Walsh and the immortals like him.

• 14:46Speaker 05

  I could argue that no one has had as much direct access as I've had to the men most responsible for transforming pro football into the game it is today. And I would argue that no one is better suited to highlight and explain the brilliant lessons and revelatory insights of these masters.

• 15:05Pablo Torre?

  And to hear him tell it, I mean, is Bill Walsh's right-hand man?

• 15:11Speaker 05

  Leading up to the 1986 draft, there was an unusual sense of urgency even for the workaholic like Walsh. That winter, he seemed to always be calling me to fetch film of a prospect or work with the phones in search of more information. My job was to be on call at all times to help him with whatever he needed. That included invitation-only Saturday sessions in which Walsh and the 49ers staff discussed in great detail the players each of them had scouted over the previous week. Through it all, he took notes on his ubiquitous three-by-five cards, leaning my way and whispering instructions whenever he needed supplemental information.

• 15:49Speaker 04

  Whispering requests for information and trading sort of like personnel notes, ear to ear.

• 15:58Pablo Torre?

  Invitation only.

• 15:59Speaker 04

  Right, that's the way Lombardi portrays it in the book and with anybody who sort of gets within earshot. But the first person I reached out to to fact-check this part of the book was Ray Rado, who covered the team, specifically the Niners, for decades, right? He's an authority on sort of what was going on in that building. And Ray says, quote, "Never heard his name mentioned in the building. Mike Lombardi literally cast no shadow."

• 16:29Pablo Torre?

  Yeah, Ray, an actual writer and the owner of an amazing mustache, was not sufficient for us, despite those factors, by the way.

• 16:38Speaker 04

  Right.

• 16:39Pablo Torre?

  Because the thing that I really demanded of you was a more firsthand source even.

• 16:46Speaker 04

  That became difficult because it's like, well, Bill Walsh has died. How do we fact-check how close they were and how tight they were and how, what kind of like trade secrets they shared? So I talked to someone who actually spent a lot of quality time with Bill Walsh, a guy who wrote a book about leadership with Bill Walsh in 2009. It's titled "The Score Takes Care of Itself: My Philosophy of Leadership." I mean, Pablo, this is a good source. A marketing executive with the 49ers. Oh, and he was also Bill Walsh's son, Craig Walsh.

• 17:23Speaker 01

  You know, in 84, did he come in in 84, 83? The Niners had already met with good success. You know, so it wasn't like he was building part of the building blocks that built the, you know, the dynasty.

• 17:35Pablo Torre?

  What did Craig Walsh have to say about Mike Lombardi?

• 17:39Speaker 04

  Craig took it a step farther than Ray Rado. He was much more clear about the truth of this relationship.

• 17:47Speaker 01

  You know, he was just there in a very, very limited role. I don't think he really had any personal contact with Bill Walsh outside of maybe seeing him in the hallway or sitting in the back of a meeting, you know, but, but he was not telling Bill, here's what we're gonna do. Uh, you know, we need to move up. We're gonna trade with Pittsburgh to get their eighth pick and then we're gonna get this and we're gonna parlay that and now we're gonna get Charles Haley and I don't buy any of that. He might've been like the gopher chauffeur, pick him up here. In fact, that, that does kind of ring a bell. You know, that, that this was your entryway into when you get to wear a 49ers shirt, but that's about as far as it goes.

• 18:23Pablo Torre?

  It's not quite the direct access described by a three-time Super Bowl-winning strategist.

• 18:29Speaker 04

  Not exactly BFFs, no.

• 18:35Pablo Torre?

  And by the way, you did hear Craig Walsh reference before the name of Charles Haley. Of course, the Hall of Fame pass rusher Bill Walsh drafted in 1986. Lombardi has written that Charles Haley is, quote, "one of the best suggestions of my scouting career," end quote. What you should know is that this is a claim Craig Walsh considers a revisionist exaggeration.

• 19:02Speaker 01

  As I remember, his kind of claim to fame was, was Charles Haley.

• 19:06Speaker 04

  Okay.

• 19:06Speaker 01

  His big claim to fame. But as far as his helping shape the 49ers, that would be a heck of a stretch.

• 19:15Pablo Torre?

  It is also worth pointing out, though, that in Lombardi's bio for the 2017 Sloan Sports Analytics Conference, which the panelists typically submit themselves, his bio reads, quote, "In 1986, he assisted Walsh in becoming one of the first executives to substantially trade down to" collect draft picks, which then resulted in what many consider to be one of the finest all-around NFL drafts. In that draft, the 49ers selected seven starters that played pivotal roles in their Super Bowl teams, as well as Hall of Famer Charles Haley in the fourth round. End quote. But again, Craig Walsh sees it differently. And he also points out that Lombardi's relationship with his father, Bill Walsh, the man Lombardi

• 20:00Pablo Torre?

  loves to quote, did not end well.

• 20:03Speaker 01

  And I think, you know, as far as falling out with my father, I think my father just realized that maybe Mike had a little bit bigger picture of himself than maybe was true and maybe tried to leverage his things at the 49ers into something bigger. And my father said, no. Typical how my father operated is, you know, if you got a little too big for your britches or thought your importance was greater than the sum of its parts, then you're going to be probably shown the door.

• 20:32Pablo Torre?

  But on the specific question of 1984, the season those 49ers won that Super Bowl, the first one that a three-time Super Bowl-winning executive and strategist now claims, we did want to find actual documentary evidence to consider. We did have to go and consult the 49ers media guy to just get real clarity on like what Mike Lombardi's job was in 1984, what he's listed as, if we can show that on screen here at age 25 with no NFL experience, of course, was not scout, actually. It was this.

• 21:13Pablo Torre?

  Second from the left, second row, Michael Lombardi, who's listed as staff assistant. And God bless the Dwight Schrutes of the NFL.

• 21:24Speaker 04

  I was wondering if we were gonna weigh in on that.

• 21:26Pablo Torre?

  The assistant to the scout.

• 21:28Speaker 04

  Now that's an author photo right there.

• 21:30Pablo Torre?

  By the way, Ray Ratto and young Michael Lombardi, both incredible mustaches. I should point out, though, that this whole thing about like, won a Super Bowl with the Niners. It's listed, by the way, one of the three Super Bowls that Michael Lombardi says he won. On all the books he's written, he's written another one recently, same thing is touted. His bio, his public bio at North Carolina.

• 21:52Speaker 04

  It's like, you can't get the guy to stop talking about typewriters, about Bill Walsh, and about how he's a three-time, Super Bowl-winning executive and strategist. It's over and over and over again, and guess what? Craig Walsh, um, he wasn't quite sure about that either.

• 22:11Speaker 01

  That's a step too far.

• 22:12Speaker 04

  Okay.

• 22:13Speaker 01

  Did he have a ring? Did he get a ring? No. Only the coaches got rings.

• 22:17Speaker 04

  Right.

• 22:18Speaker 01

  And maybe the general manager, right? Maybe, maybe they felt lucky and gave the personnel guy one, but he wasn't either of that. So he doesn't have a ring whatsoever. He might have got a Balfour pendant.

• 22:31Pablo Torre?

  I had to look up a Balfour pendant.

• 22:34Speaker 04

  It's like a high school class ring?

• 22:36Pablo Torre?

  Yeah, it's the sort of thing you can buy off of balfour.com.

• 22:39Speaker 04

  Yeah, it's...

• 22:40Pablo Torre?

  To commemorate graduation.

• 22:42Speaker 04

  Kind of an epic burn. I mean...

• 22:44Pablo Torre?

  That is a very inside championship ring jewelry burn.

• 22:52Pablo Torre?

  But something I have found out here is that not all Super Bowl rings are created equal. The rings we think of as fans, for instance, these are the rings that really matter, are what is known as the A-grade rings. These are the rings that the actual players and coaches and owners and executives and essential staff receive with real diamonds and their names typically engraved. But there are, in so many words, the Balfour versions of these rings. To quote Craig Walsh, these are known as the B and C-grade rings, which tend to have imitation diamonds instead of the real ones. And these can be given out to other employees and even family members.

• 23:37Pablo Torre?

  And if you watch enough Mike Lombardi videos, as we have, you can see him, for instance, wearing what appears to be this... This kind of 49ers Super Bowl ring in at least one appearance on ESPN, which we'll show you here on our YouTube channel. Which is why we here at Pablo Torre Finds Out asked Mike Lombardi through North Carolina Football PR, quote, "Did the San Francisco 49ers organization award you an official Super Bowl 19 ring as a 49ers employee during the 1984-85 season?" And the response was, quote, "We are going to respectfully pass on answering that question."

• 24:22Pablo Torre?

  Craig Walsh, for the record, is not sure how Lombardi would have gotten this ring that we showed you, but his feelings as a 49ers exec and Bill Walsh's son remain very clear.

• 24:36Speaker 01

  I'll jump on the wagon a little bit just because I don't like him using, you know, the fact that he was part of the 49ers organization and all he did was cook his sandwiches, right?

• 24:45Speaker 04

  Right, right, yeah, exactly. What Craig was saying was, "Do you really deserve a ring if all you're doing is running out and getting sandwiches for people?" Is that really what you would describe as being an executive and a strategist on a Super Bowl winning team?

• 25:03Pablo Torre?

  I think it depends on how good the sandwiches are.

• 25:05Speaker 04

  I mean, they must have been phenomenal, but to me, it's like a busboy or a waiter claiming that they won a James Beard Award.

• 25:15Pablo Torre?

  And by the way, football requires scouting assistants of all kinds.

• 25:21Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 25:21Pablo Torre?

  And it's essential to the kitchen. The question is, are you giving TED Talks about it?

• 25:27Speaker 04

  Exactly. Are you telling the truth and are you proud of what the plain truth is? Or are you sort of telling it in a way that builds your own mythology that mimics that of an executive and a strategist without actually having done the work?

• 25:40Pablo Torre?

  Well, the work that he does next, that timeline is chronicled, you guessed it. In Gridiron Genius.

• 25:49Speaker 05

  After four years with Walsh, for whom I worked my way up to an area scout position, I moved on to Cleveland. By the time I left nine years later, I was the Browns' director of pro personnel. But more important along the way, I swapped one legendary mentor for another as Belichick arrived in 1991 to begin honing his head coaching skills.

• 26:11Pablo Torre?

  This is how the University of North Carolina like program is born, right? It's in Cleveland.

• 26:18Speaker 04

  Yeah. For the first time Lombardi and Belichick meet up in Cleveland from 1991 to 1995, and they were instant best buds. Always in each other's offices. And you know what's funny is doing the same old [BLEEP] over and over again, not saying hello to people, not not getting outside advice. And people who I talked to who were there at the time, what I heard was that Belichick and Lombardi had they got the locks on either side of the hallway of the coaches. So nobody but the coaches and personnel could go down that hallway. That's how sequestered immediately they were.

• 26:57Pablo Torre?

  Wait, they locked?

• 26:58Speaker 04

  You needed a pass, a special pass to get into where the coaches were. So that the riffraff couldn't get in there. You know, like the owner.

• 27:07Pablo Torre?

  To Art Modell, could not access it. My understanding is also that that is, in fact, the Belichick Lombardi relationship, a real intimate bond. Like those two guys, unlike the Walsh thing.

• 27:22Speaker 04

  Right.

• 27:23Pablo Torre?

  They actually do hit it off.

• 27:24Speaker 04

  Yes, that's a really good point. This is a true, close relationship. They're attached at the hip in Cleveland for four years.

• 27:31Pablo Torre?

  Right. And so what happens, though, unfortunately for Mike Lombardi, is that Belichick gets fired by the Browns in 95. Art Modell announces, we're moving the franchise, quite infamously, to Baltimore. And Mike Lombardi is left sort of figuring out where to go next.

• 27:49Speaker 05

  Then it was on to Oakland, where I spent a decade with the National Football League's last true maverick, Al Davis. As a senior assistant, the kind of vague title Davis handed out when he didn't want anyone to know what exactly was going on behind the curtain in Raider land.

• 28:05Pablo Torre?

  Although the thing that Al Davis, the owner of the Raiders, is very clear about, not at all vague, in years to come, would be how he feels about Mike Lombardi. And I do want to just get to this because the whole thing of the Al Davis, Bill Walsh tree is again, part of the legend that Mike Lombardi writes.

• 28:29Speaker 05

  When I was a scouting assistant in San Francisco in the 1980s, Bill Walsh told me that Al Davis had taught him more about football than anyone else. And ever since, I had dreamed of working for the Raiders. Inevitably, our paths crossed. At the scouting combine in Indianapolis, we became friends. Not surprisingly, our friendship centered on football. Before long, he was calling my home, usually late at night to talk about the draft, or our coach, or some player who had caught his eye.

• 29:00Speaker 04

  I mean, again, another icon of the game, another pillar of the game. A well-known maverick.

• 29:07Pablo Torre?

  Track suits.

• 29:08Speaker 04

  Right, track suits.

• 29:09Pablo Torre?

  Slicked hair.

• 29:10Speaker 04

  Slicked back hair, the "just win, baby."

• 29:13Speaker 05

  "Just win, baby."

• 29:17Pablo Torre?

  Scandal, but glory, and also lots of gold chains and sunglasses.

• 29:22Speaker 04

  Constantly suing the league, the league's constantly suing him. If you love the dark side of the NFL, you love Al Davis.

• 29:29Pablo Torre?

  Which is all to say that after a quick stopover in 98 with the Philadelphia Eagles, he winds up in 1998, working for that guy, Al Davis, Mike Lombardi does. And so, this role, which is listed, by the way, on his UNC bio as Senior Personnel Executive. I just want to clarify that whatever friendship they had, as Gridiron Genius describes, it certainly was not the case by the time Lombardi left in 2007. And there's one of truly, like, the great quotes, I would say, in front office relations, when on September 30th, 2008, Bay Area reporter Tim Kawakami transcribes the following.

• 30:10Pablo Torre?

  And I think we should do a table read here.

• 30:12Speaker 04

  Yeah, who do you want to be? Just the scrum or do you want to be Al Davis?

• 30:16Pablo Torre?

  I will be Al Davis, you be the press corps.

• 30:19Speaker 04

  I get to be the scrum, okay.

• 30:20Pablo Torre?

  You get to be the scrum.

• 30:21Speaker 04

  Mike Lombardi was a loyal guy for years.

• 30:24Pablo Torre?

  Mike Lombardi, yes, he was all right.

• 30:28Speaker 04

  And, but he's taking shots at you.

• 30:30Pablo Torre?

  That's part of life, you just live with those things. He was with me eight years. Mike Lombardi has been fired from every job he's ever had. Every job. He can't get a job. Last year, he was fired from a job he was working for nothing. He was fired from Denver. But he does have ability. He does have some ability.

• 30:50Speaker 04

  And scene?

• 30:51Pablo Torre?

  But the question of why the Raiders let him go? I mean, this is the story of not just the breakup between Al Davis and Mike Lombardi, but it's a story of one of the most, again, memorable press conferences. This one from 2007, in which the Raiders head coach, Art Shell, calls out, quote, "A fox in the hen house", who was involved in, quote, "character assassination", and the fox, apparently, was who?

• 31:17Speaker 04

  The gridiron genius himself, Michael Lombardi. The team finishes 2-14, and you can see Lombardi is starting to try and lay the groundwork behind the scenes that it wasn't his fault, right? That he's-

• 31:31Pablo Torre?

  His roster-

• 31:32Speaker 04

  Right.

• 31:33Pablo Torre?

  Was not the problem.

• 31:33Speaker 04

  Right. His, uh, yeah, it was, even though they were his players that finished 2-14, it was because they hired Art Shell instead of Bobby Petrino. Which was-

• 31:43Pablo Torre?

  Who you may remember from such motorcycle accidents as the one that happened at Arkansas, in which he was wearing a neck braid.

• 31:49Speaker 04

  Yeah, that was Michael Lombardi's choice. And I think he was-

• 31:52Pablo Torre?

  Amazing.

• 31:52Speaker 04

  He was mad about that the whole year, and so sort of threw a hissy fit behind the scenes and was bad-mouthing everybody in the organization to the media. And then, we come up to his last act as a, as a GM in, in Oakland.

• 32:08Pablo Torre?

  Right, and this brings us back to the relationship he has with Belichick.

• 32:12Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 32:13Pablo Torre?

  So this, again, this bond that has formed in Cleveland, apparently, according to everybody in Oakland, sustained to the point where- Mike Lombardi is basically feeding information to Belichick about a very useful player that the Patriots did end up acquiring.

• 32:30Speaker 04

  Yeah, it's a serious charge. He's being accused, basically, of tampering in the trade that sent Randy Moss, a future Hall of Famer from Oakland, to Bill Belichick's roster in New England for a fourth-round pick.

• 32:46Pablo Torre?

  Right.

• 32:47Speaker 04

  He missed the last three games of the season with a hurt ankle, but it didn't require surgery. And the story is, right, that Lombardi is telling the Raiders, Moss is done, he can't run anymore, while telling Bill, dude, take this guy, he's gonna be a star. And of course, he goes to New England and ends up an All-Pro.

• 33:07Pablo Torre?

  Yeah, they end up having one of the greatest offenses in the history of football. And what the Raiders all believe, apparently, is that Mike Lombardi gave them, his employer, bad information to help his old friend, Bill Belichick.

• 33:22Speaker 04

  Yeah, Al Davis was adamant that that's how it went down.

• 33:25Pablo Torre?

  Right. And Mike Lombardi, of course, denies the claims of tampering. He says, absolutely not, when asked by Inside the NFL, did the tampering take place? He says that Al Davis threw everyone under the bus. But further, quote, "We were trying to trade Randy Moss to the New England Patriots. I thought that was good information to give Bill Belichick. But now, Al Davis accused all of us making those charges, and now he's going to have to face them."

• 33:50Speaker 04

  But my reporting points to something even deeper and systemic with the problems Lombardi was having with everybody in Oakland, not just Al Davis and not just Art Shell. This is from a longtime NFL front office exec. "It was very obvious that self-promotion was a priority for Mike Lombardi. And for Al to fire him like that just shows how obviously bad this was. It was clear that Al didn't like the way Lombardi did business, and the way that he comported himself was not in a healthy way for a business to be run. He worked the phones like crazy with the media, but it was always to lobby for good coverage of himself.

• 34:33Speaker 04

  Al's big complaint at the end was that he spent more time promoting himself than he did working on things for the organization. I mean, so much self-promotion."

• 34:46Pablo Torre?

  And if you're wondering why the stories you've been telling you here with this level of clarity have not been told in full all of the time around everything like Lombardi does, it is in part because of this. He has lots of friends in media and he works the phones. And he is, in fact, by the way, if nothing else, just fast forwarding ahead here, the number one source that you might quote about everything, Bill Belichick.

• 35:12Speaker 04

  That's a really good point, that one of the ways that he sort of insulated himself from people criticizing him or going after him is, he was maybe the only source to Belichick. And so you're not going to burn that guy by saying that he tampered with the Randy Moss trade, and then you'll never get access to Belichick.

• 35:32Pablo Torre?

  Right.

• 35:33Speaker 04

  And so part of this story, part of this mythology is built on Lombardi being smart enough to know that if he does favors for the media, I mean, it's like a politician, he knows, right?

• 35:44Pablo Torre?

  Absolutely.

• 35:45Speaker 04

  You do favors for the media, whisper things, tell them about things, let them break a little news, they're not gonna bend over backwards to rip you a new one.

• 35:53Pablo Torre?

  Right. When the greatest football coach of all time is operating a dynasty premised on privacy, and there's one guy who's gonna give you the inside scoop, and this one guy happens to be behind the scenes, as we reported in the last episode in this series, quote, "a top five most despised figure in the NFL," you might take that trade off because it gets you the story that actually is way more valuable than the debunking of the gridiron genius.

• 36:22Speaker 04

  But you are starting to see a pattern, right, of Lombardi sort of protecting himself, of him almost having a sixth sense of when he needs to get out in front of things that are going sideways.

• 36:33Pablo Torre?

  Right. And what Mike Lombardi, in this timeline, ends up pivoting to is poetic. He winds up back with the Cleveland Browns, and then, naturally, he winds up in New England, back with Bill Belichick, after the break.

• 36:58Pablo Torre?

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• 38:33Pablo Torre?

  The word cloud around Mike Lombardi is staggering. Like, it is a funny thing to just call people up almost at random and say, "What do you think about this guy?" And the list, Flem. If you want to do a draft of the words that we've heard... This is, again, we are not, like, gilding the lily here, or whatever the opposite of that is. What do you take here on this draft board?

• 38:55Speaker 04

  I'm going for a remora fish.

• 38:58Pablo Torre?

  That's pretty good.

• 38:58Speaker 04

  The parasitic fish that feed off the scraps of sharks?

• 39:03Pablo Torre?

  Uh, I'm just gonna go full of [BLEEP].

• 39:05Speaker 04

  Yeah, devious.

• 39:07Pablo Torre?

  Desperate.

• 39:08Speaker 04

  conniving.

• 39:09Pablo Torre?

  Third tier.

• 39:10Speaker 04

  Oh, that third tier is a good one. And around real football people, a minor leaguer.

• 39:16Pablo Torre?

  Oh, God. This is on top of, by the way, WRAL, the local news outlet in Chapel Hill, reporting that their sources tell them that Michael Lombardi is, quote, rude, nasty, and also, quote, "nobody likes him." So, not to say that he doesn't have some supporters or fans, but this is the accumulated weight of, I would say, behind-the-scenes opinion that is truly jarring to just hear over and over again as you're making dozens of calls. But here we are. We're back in New England. Because his tenure as GM of the Browns ends in 2013. He lasts one season. They had seven straight losses at the end. They went 4-12. All of that was disastrous.

• 40:00Pablo Torre?

  And who shows up to save him but his old friend, Bill Belichick, as described and read by Mike Lombardi in the audiobook version of the foreword by Bill Belichick?

• 40:14Speaker 05

  Mike is one of the smartest people I have worked with. He has a thorough understanding not only of personnel, but of coaching, team building, and the salary cap, too. His work ethic, attention to detail, and near photographic memory made him both valuable and versatile to me at the two organizations at which we worked together.

• 40:37Pablo Torre?

  So according to Mike Lombardi's UNC bio, again, the official version, his title was Assistant to the Coaching Staff, which is...

• 40:46Speaker 04

  Again, made up.

• 40:48Pablo Torre?

  Kind of a vague title. That seems, again, deliberately vague, you might argue. There's been reporting around New England that says it was a position created specifically for him, but in our reporting, Flem...

• 41:00Speaker 04

  Right.

• 41:00Pablo Torre?

  The economics of this kind of explain what's really happening here.

• 41:04Speaker 04

  Another pattern emerges that he's in New England strictly because the Browns are paying his salary.

• 41:11Pablo Torre?

  After firing him.

• 41:12Speaker 04

  Yes. Yeah. So he's working for free, essentially, in New England.

• 41:16Pablo Torre?

  I am told, according to multiple sources, Bill Belichick hired him to his staff. He had full control of personnel decisions. Bill Belichick hired his old friend, Mike Lombardi, to that vague job without telling anybody else.

• 41:30Pablo Torre?

  And so suddenly, Mike Lombardi was in the building doing stuff for Bill.

• 41:35Speaker 04

  But people shouldn't have been surprised because Belichick, this is a trick he does, right? He is a landing spot for wayward souls. And what that does is it produces loyalty. If you have no other options and Bill brings you in, you're going to be loyal to him no matter what. It's really interesting to see that Bill Belichick sort of values loyalty more than expertise, more than smarts, more than track record. It's loyalty.

• 42:04Pablo Torre?

  And according to multiple sources in and around New England, with direct knowledge of this situation, the tenure that Mike Lombardi has as assistant to the coaching staff in New England, from 2014 to 2016, it is quite clear how it all ended. Mike Lombardi gets into that building and according again to multiple sources directly familiar with these dynamics, ends up getting into various power struggles with other executives. Lombardi was, quote, "internally disruptive." And so the problem was by June of 2016, that economic calculus, the cost benefit of this guy is basically free labor for us. It flips because his Browns contract expires. And now the Patriots have to make a choice.

• 42:49Pablo Torre?

  Do we pay Mike Lombardi to be in the building? What I am told with no ambiguity is that Mike Lombardi is fired by the Patriots because Bob Kraft, the owner of the team, tells Bill Belichick in a rare instance of him overruling a personnel preference or desire, "You gotta get rid of him." The backdrop being that there was, quote, "basically a mutiny" in the building among not just staffers but players if he were to remain in the building.

• 43:28Pablo Torre?

  And so, this is where I just want to give you a partial list of the people who complained about Mike Lombardi and ultimately wanted him gone. This according to multiple Patriots sources who are directly familiar with what happened. The list includes: Defensive Coordinator Matt Patricia, Offensive Coordinator Josh McDaniels, Director of Player Personnel Nick Casario, Director of Football/Head Coach Administration Berge Njerian, and also Director of Football Research Ernie Adams. That's just some of the mutiny, I am told. And yet, for reasons that remain frustrating to team executives,

• 44:09Pablo Torre?

  Bill Balachek still wanted to pay Lombardi. But you should know that in August of 2016, this was two months after his departure from the team was publicly announced, that June of 2016, Lombardi joined WEEI to explain his exit. And he did it by explaining that he wanted to write a book. And that book, of course, would become none other than Gridiron Genius. Quote, "I thought if the clock was going too far along, I wasn't going to have the time and opportunity to do that. It was my decision. Bill and I worked it out.

• 44:51Pablo Torre?

  There were only two people in the room when we decided what we were going to do." End quote. But just to be clear, according to multiple sources who were with the Patriots at the time, Lombardi was fired by the team after the 2016 NFL Draft, which explains why, after being listed as Assistant to the Coaching Staff in the 2015 Patriots Media Guide, the only Lombardi mentioned in the 2016 Media Guide at all is Vince. As in Vince Lombardi, as in the Lombardi Super Bowl Trophy. Mike is not mentioned at all.

• 45:40Pablo Torre?

  But the other thing about the timeline here, right? So I want to get these dates correct because the dates provided to me make very clear something that I think is germane to our ongoing investigation into this legend. Because Mike Lombardi, he is hired by Bill Belichick to this amorphous, you know, assistant role in February 2014.

• 46:02Speaker 04

  Okay.

• 46:03Pablo Torre?

  So that means that when it comes to the Super Bowls, he is claiming, right?

• 46:09Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 46:10Pablo Torre?

  There's the one from 1984.

• 46:13Speaker 04

  Mm-hmm, ball four pendant.

• 46:15Pablo Torre?

  Yes, and then here we have the one that he won in that 2014 NFL season.

• 46:21Speaker 04

  Right, right.

• 46:22Pablo Torre?

  The first season that he was with the Patriots as an assistant to the coaching staff.

• 46:27Speaker 04

  Mm-hmm, okay.

• 46:28Pablo Torre?

  It has been described to me, by the way, as something I should look into because it reminded one NFL source as quite similar to the one he won with the 49ers, in which he shows up and that first year in which he just is inheriting the accumulated work of truly some football geniuses, he gets to win a title.

• 46:48Speaker 04

  At least he was physically there.

• 46:50Pablo Torre?

  Yes.

• 46:51Speaker 04

  I know where you're going.

• 46:53Pablo Torre?

  Flam, I urge you to recall your NFL experience.

• 46:58Speaker 04

  This is unbelievable.

• 46:59Pablo Torre?

  And tell me, when did an NFL team generally start having training camp?

• 47:05Speaker 04

  Oh my god.

• 47:06Pablo Torre?

  For the upcoming season?

• 47:08Speaker 04

  So Lombardi, the gridiron genius, gets fired in June. The Patriots basically start their season with training camp in July and August.

• 47:17Pablo Torre?

  Yep.

• 47:18Speaker 04

  Go on to win the Super Bowl, seven months after parting ways with Michael Lombardi, and at the top of every bio, at the beginning of every interview, every speech, every goddamn page of this book, is the fact that he's a three-time Super Bowl-winning executive and strategist, and he wasn't even there for that one.

• 47:41Pablo Torre?

  He wasn't even there.

• 47:47Pablo Torre?

  And so I just gotta jump in here to report that Mike Lombardi was not issued an official Super Bowl 51 ring as a Patriots employee during the 2016-17 season. As much as he enjoys referring to all of the bling he's won as a three-time Super Bowl champion, including, by the way, during a TEDx talk that he gave while wearing a huge oval-shaped Super Bowl ring. And the title of the talk was, quote, "Leadership is Destroying Culture", delivered in 2018.

• 48:20Speaker 05

  I got enough bling here to last a lifetime, right? Well, I've actually borrowed this from my grandson because I've given all the bling away, because the one thing I've learned in life, grandkids are the best bling of all, right? So...

• 48:35Pablo Torre?

  You should also mention here that we did ask Lombardi via Carolina Football PR, quote, "Did the New England Patriots organization award you an official Super Bowl 51 ring as a Patriots employee during the 2016-17 season?" The answer, as aforementioned, was, "We respectfully pass here." But what I'm told by multiple Patriots sources is that Lombardi did remain in contact with Balaschek throughout that 2016 season in a purely personal capacity, and that after Super Bowl 51, that 28-3 comeback win against the Falcons in February 2017, something happened

• 49:19Pablo Torre?

  that still blows people who were in that building away. Because Bill Balaschek, I am told, personally bought and presented Lombardi with a Super Bowl ring. Not an official, team-issued, A-grade ring with the real diamonds in it and all that, but the kind that a top executive could buy for his family members. Or, to quote the words again of Craig Walsh, Bill Walsh's son, "The Balfour pendant version of a Super Bowl ring." And if you zoom in on that huge oval-shaped ring that we showed you in that clip we played before from Lombardi's TEDx talk about leadership...

• 50:04Pablo Torre?

  That distinctive shape certainly seems to match.

• 50:10Speaker 04

  This is mind blowing because it's been, it's literally on the front of it. It's on the front cover of his books.

• 50:17Pablo Torre?

  It's, he's introduced on television.

• 50:20Speaker 04

  Right.

• 50:21Pablo Torre?

  On the covers of a zillion different things. It's just one of those things that you say so often that you begin to look like someone who did it.

• 50:29Speaker 04

  No one thinks to go, wait a second, those dates don't, don't match up. I mean, this is unbelievable because the other thing is you don't have to do that. You've, you've technically won two Super Bowls.

• 50:42Pablo Torre?

  Right, you're actually there.

• 50:43Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 50:44Pablo Torre?

  For two of them. I'm just trying to think of the most generous defense.

• 50:48Speaker 04

  There is none Pablo, I mean, that's, that's, that's, I applaud that.

• 50:52Pablo Torre?

  You can't claim it.

• 50:53Speaker 04

  No, come on. I mean, there, you, there are players who are sacrificing everything and they're the ones who get the Super Bowl rings. And for Mike Lombardi to, to claim that third ring. And it's, it's unnecessary too, that's the other thing.

• 51:07Pablo Torre?

  Yes, it's unnecessary. And also, I think in defense of the people in New England who are very eager to tell Pablo Torre finds out this story. This is kind of their point.

• 51:20Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 51:21Pablo Torre?

  I want to be clear about this. This is one of those things where you open up a closet door. And two rings fall out.

• 51:33Speaker 04

  You've got people not only calling him a remorse fish or devious. So he was out of the NFL for nine years.

• 51:40Pablo Torre?

  Oh, I mean, New England, him getting fired in 2016, that was his last job in the NFL.

• 51:46Speaker 04

  Right, that's, that's an eternity in football years, right? Nine years total. But that's why I remember, and I think I may even texted you this. When Lombardi came up with that asinine slogan that we're going to be the 33rd NFL team.

• 52:00Pablo Torre?

  Yes.

• 52:00Speaker 04

  My first reaction, I think a lot of people around the league, same thing. It was like, how the would he know when the 33rd NFL franchise would look like? He's been out of the league and unemployable for nine years.

• 52:15Pablo Torre?

  We tried to do some math on this. The winning percentage on those NFL rosters, on those NFL teams that he had some control over. We're trying again, just do some of the accounting here. We're looking at like 39%. UNC's current winning percentage at press time as they go ahead and play a nationally ranked Virginia phlegm, you will be shocked to discover that it is 33.3%.

• 52:45Speaker 04

  So at least something in Lombardi's bio is consistent.

• 52:59Speaker 04

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• 53:29Speaker 05

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• 54:35Pablo Torre?

  So Flam, as we reach the end of this show, having done our book club together here, our investigative book club, I did talk to somebody, an executive, who has signed and recruited players for a power four program directly in competition with Bill Belichick and Mike Lombardi and UNC in the present tense. And something that they are very amused by, as I began to unspool the whole premise and the thesis of this episode, is that as much as you guys, you and me, might be debunking this book and this guy's resume, even if it was all true, his point is that the 33rd NFL team thing is [bleep] stupid, because that's not

• 55:20Pablo Torre?

  actually what college players are into today, anyway.

• 55:25Speaker 02

  Correct. I don't think that any of that is relevant to an 18, 19, 20-year-old sitting in his office, asking how North Carolina football is going to help him. He does not care that, like, wrote a book, or is friends with, or had a relationship with, very famous, successful coaches.

• 55:44Pablo Torre?

  Even if one of those coaches happens to be the other person in the room with his own actual collection of Super Bowl rings, that's not really, the Bill Belichick brand is not, in your estimation, of the college football landscape and marketplace. This season, it's not moving the needle.

• 56:03Speaker 02

  Correct. I think that that does not seem likely, that any of that would move the needle with these kids.

• 56:09Pablo Torre?

  Yeah. What would move the needle with these kids?

• 56:13Speaker 02

  Money, and a platform for them to sell their services and develop, create a potential for an NFL career.

• 56:23Pablo Torre?

  Right.

• 56:24Speaker 02

  In college sports, there is no draft, and so you are constantly selling yourself to players. You can't force a player to stay at your school. And so, unlike the NFL, where you sign a drafted rookie to a four-year contract, your players in college can basically leave at any point, or you can recruit a player for a long time, and they can just choose to go somewhere else. You need to be an appealing destination.

• 56:52Speaker 04

  It can't be a no fun place and it can't be to do your job. I'm gonna, you know, sell someone on this tiny role and be part of a winning organization. That's not selling kids. And it's going to be very hard to sell them on what you've achieved at a prior place.

• 57:11Pablo Torre?

  What if they could promise them Pameos in an unending series of memes?

• 57:17Speaker 04

  No, I don't. I don't see that being a selling point either.

• 57:21Pablo Torre?

  Oh.

• 57:23Speaker 04

  I think it goes deeper than that. People aren't realizing, maybe to you and I and to these kids' parents, Bill Belichick and Mike Lombardi are a name or they've got some recognition. These are 18 year old kids, right? I mean, because I have kids this age, they were nine years old the last time Michael Lombardi was relevant. And then they were probably 12 the last time Bill Belichick was sort of on the sidelines at a Super Bowl. They have no idea who these guys are.

• 57:56Pablo Torre?

  But the idea that Lombardi is so important to Belichick, you know, there's, there's been some real psychoanalysis taking place as I talk to all these people around the league. Because someone who has known Lombardi for 20 years, has sort of like tugged my sleeve to something, which is that Belichick, as much as like Spygate was this scandal and controversy, what they pointed out is something that lots of people have echoed since I've been testing this theory, which is that Bill Belichick has never been more hurt, has never felt more vulnerable, has never felt older than he has after Tom Brady

• 58:38Pablo Torre?

  went and won a Super Bowl in Tampa, immediately after leaving him. And in this era, in which Bob Kraft and this 10 part dynasty documentary series feels like a betrayal.

• 58:51Pablo Torre?

  And so into that breach, into that power vacuum, in which people are kind of selling their Belichick stock, there is one consistent voice on any number of television shows and podcasts, titling himself as a three-time Super Bowl winning strategist, who says, "You have it all wrong about Belichick. He's still as good as he's ever been. He's the greatest of all time. He still has his fastball." And the reason why Belichick trusts him is as much because Belichick himself, to quote that word "cloud", is desperate.

• 59:30Speaker 04

  And this is another example of the gridiron bull****, right? Because the other thing that makes Belichick look really bad is Mike Lombardi, right? This is an indictment on Bill Belichick, right? He refers to Mike Lombardi as this great football mind.

• 59:48Pablo Torre?

  His consigliere.

• 59:49Speaker 04

  Right. Bill Belichick has served with Bill Parcells. He's been around Tom Brady and Mike Lombardi, the guy who we've deconstructed. That's who Bill Belichick picked? I mean, at the end of the day, it's an indictment on Bill Belichick that he values loyalty more than anything else.

• 1:00:09Pablo Torre?

  And it reminds me of what I was told when I was asking NFL executives, "Why didn't you guys hire Bill Belichick when he was fired from the Patriots?" And the answer was, "These teams did not trust who Belichick would bring into the building with him." And here in North Carolina, just to briefly recap, you have the greatest coach of all time at age 73. You have, on one hand, running his personal and media business and life is Jordan Hudson, age 24. And on the other, you have Mike Lombardi.

• 1:00:48Pablo Torre?

  I feel like it's a good time to point out that on that TikTok that Mike Lombardi put out about the typewriter.

• 1:00:55Speaker 04

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:00:56Pablo Torre?

  A comment was left by Jordan Hudson. And the backstory here, as previously reported, is that Mike Lombardi is the one who told multiple people around the UNC program that Jordan Hudson was no longer welcome or allowed in the building. He was the one passing down the message that she is banned from the program.

• 1:01:16Speaker 04

  Lombardi's giving her the Art Shell treatment, right? I mean, it's not a new thing. It's not an original thing.

• 1:01:23Pablo Torre?

  And in fact, I've been told he is often rolling his eyes in her presence. But the thing that I want to read from is what Jordan Hudson posted in the comment section. I mean, you should read it because I am blocked on Instagram by Jordan Hudson and cannot see this anymore.

• 1:01:39Speaker 04

  Well, I don't want to get blocked. Now I'm gonna get blocked.

• 1:01:41Pablo Torre?

  I got bad news for you.

• 1:01:43Speaker 04

  Oh, here's the comment.

• 1:01:46Speaker 04

  "I always got the sense that you are a tortured poet." Googly eye emoji. "All jokes aside, this is a powerful message in the age of information. I'll have to give it a try. Thanks for sharing."

• 1:02:00Speaker 04

  You want to know what the bigger lie, the bigger bull**** is than this gridiron genius? These guys, all they ever talk about is culture is everything.

• 1:02:08Pablo Torre?

  Oh, my God.

• 1:02:09Speaker 04

  Right? Culture is everything where the 24-year-old girlfriend is arguing with the guy who's claiming an extra Super Bowl ring over who gets power over the 2-4 Carolina Tar Heels. I mean, it could not be... Well, I shouldn't say that. It could get worse.

• 1:02:27Pablo Torre?

  Which brings us back to the parable that we started with.

• 1:02:31Speaker 05

  I think what you see with Jared Goff is a little bit like, there's two kinds of snakes that you come across. There's Texas coral snake and the Mexican milk snake. They both look exactly alike. But the Texas coral snake is dangerous. It's venomous. It can kill you in a minute. The Mexican milk snake can't do anything to you. It's an imposter.

• 1:02:50Speaker 04

  But in the end, it was Lombardi who kind of taught us.

• 1:02:55Pablo Torre?

  Oh, all along.

• 1:02:56Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:02:57Pablo Torre?

  He was telling us what this story really is.

• 1:03:02Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:03:02Pablo Torre?

  Which is the story of a guy who might look like a three-time Super Bowl winning strategist who can teach a master class in building teams and winning at the highest level, who might in the end, um, simply turn out to be exactly the thing he's been warning NFL teams about, which is?

• 1:03:24Speaker 04

  He is the gridiron Mexican milk snake.

• 1:03:32Speaker 04

  Don't make me sing the song either. I'm not singing the song. My milk snake brings all.

• 1:03:39Pablo Torre?

  You know what? Class dismissed.

• 1:03:42Speaker 04

  Thank God.

• 1:03:53Pablo Torre?

  But for a football book that we here at Pablo Torre finds out, fully endorse, we heartily recommend you pick up A Big Mess in Texas. The miraculous, disastrous 1952 Dallas Texans and the craziest untold story in NFL history by none other than our guest today, Dave Fleming. It's on bookshelves now. Pablo Torre Finds Out is produced by Walter Avaroma, Maxwell Carney, Brian Cortez, Juan Galindo, Patrick Kim, Neely Lohman, Rob McCray, Matt Sullivan, Claire Taylor, and Chris Tumanello. Our studio engineering by RG Systems, sound design by Andrew Bersik

• 1:04:34Pablo Torre?

  and NGW Post, theme song as always by John Bravo, and we will talk to you next time.

• 1:04:52Speaker 05

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