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

Welcome to Pablo Torre Finds Out.

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

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 49 organization and all he did was cook at sandwiches, right?

Right after the sad.

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This is a different sort of North Carolina football investigation.

Dave Fleming, thank you for being here, by the way.

My pleasure.

Thanks for having me back.

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.

Ta-da.

That's right.

Put that away.

That's not the book we're here to talk about.

You're also a North Carolina resident.

And taxpayer, yes.

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 the proud father of a tar heel senior kate fleming and we both want to know why you hate me so much pop that's what we really want to know hold on hold on i thought that sending you on an assignment to go watch carolina with your child would be a joy yeah one would think it's like the 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.

The season opener.

Right.

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.

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?

People were excited.

They're out.

Everyone's going to the stadium together.

Of course, for those who fell asleep, the hype was unprecedented for Carolina football.

Alabama last year.

Leave it with Hood.

Hood for the goal.

I'm stranding and goes in, standing up, touchdown, heels.

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

Right.

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

Right.

And they march down the field and 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.

Got to get it to the 29 on third down.

Lopez to the outside and it's intercepted.

It's going to be a walk-in touchdown for the veteran Bud Clark.

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 station.

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

Yeah.

It was only because I asked them to stay did we sort of gut it out.

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

Yeah.

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

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

It wasn't 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.

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.

No matter how they perform.

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 Balichek to this administration, which is otherwise known, as previously reported, as the 33rd NFL team.

Everything we do here is predicated on building a pro team.

We consider ourselves the 33rd team because everybody's involved with our program has had some form of aspect in pro football and most.

But the focus of our episode today, the reason you were boots on the ground at those games is because the football person Bill Balichek 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 doors off of Carolina, he is, according to his own resume, a three-time Super Bowl winner,

guy, by the way, with the last name Lombardi, which, you know, to fact-check that immediately, he is not related, but nonetheless, got to 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?

He really fancies himself a writer.

Not just a writer, a writer's writer, an author.

An author.

He does, in fact, have a book that he wrote in 2018 called Gridiron Genius.

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 son.

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.

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.

Yeah, Bill Walsh, Al Davis, Bill Belichick.

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.

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.

You're going to make mistakes.

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

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

And to act like a writer.

Yes, then

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

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

No,

no, he collects typewriters.

How many typewriters do you have?

You said you collect typewriters.

Did I understand that correctly?

Yeah, I have

I probably have like six.

Really?

And you have a prized one?

Yeah, I do.

You know the one that was on Burdessie Road?

You know, the one that Jesse...

Stop it.

No, you did not.

Oh, yeah.

I had that one.

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

We don't know when he bought the typewriter.

Right, but the price is no object.

So I just want to shout out your daughter, Kate, for taking that video,

like 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, this 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.

Michael Lombardi, he loves like a parable.

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

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

I think what you see with Jared Goff is a little bit like there's two kinds of snakes that you come across, the Texas coral snake and the Mexican milksnake.

They both look exactly alike.

But the Texas coral snake is dangerous.

It's venomous.

It can kill you in a minute.

The Mexican milksnake 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 milksnake.

Dak Prescott, he's the Texas coral snake.

Boy, he nailed that on Goff, didn't he?

Just dead to rights.

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 master class in building teams and winning at the highest level, what in this could be our roadmap to understanding why the f 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.

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

Why is Kate calling?

Oh my god, I'm so sorry.

That's funny.

Wait, wait, should I answer?

Yes, answer.

Oh my god.

Hi, Fooch.

We're literally taping

your dad's podcasting.

We're literally taping your show as we speak.

We just played your undercover video.

Oh my God.

All right, guys.

Yeah, sorry.

As much as this is take your child to work day.

Although, I guess.

Kind of.

Love you.

Love you.

I should explain that that was entirely spontaneous.

Wow, that is.

Now that I think about it, it kind of is take your child to work day.

Yeah.

I think she wanted to know where she was getting paid, I think.

She's like, where's my check, old man?

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, Phlegm, from 1981 to 1984, the last time he worked in college before getting hired as the highest paid general manager in college football.

No big deal.

The present tense.

All you got to 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?

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.

Yes, Mr.

West Coast offense.

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.

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.

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.

And to hear him tell it.

I mean, he's Bill Walsh's right-hand man.

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 49er 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 3x5 cards, leaning my way and whispering instructions whenever he needed supplemental information.

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

Invitation only.

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.

Yeah, Ray, an actual writer and the owner of an amazing mustache,

was not sufficient for us, despite those factors, by the way.

Right.

Because the thing that I really demanded of you was a more first-hand source, even.

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.

He was a marketing executive with the 49ers.

Oh, and he was also Bill Walsh's son, Craig Walsh.

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

What did Craig Walsh have to say about Mike Lombardi?

Craig took it a step farther than Ray Rado.

He was much more clear about the truth of this relationship.

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 he was not telling Bill, here's what we're going to do.

You know, we need to move up, we're going to trade with Pittsburgh to get their eighth pick, and then we're going to get this and we're parlay that, and then we're going to get Charles Haley.

And I don't buy any of that.

He might have been like the gopher chauffeur, pick him up here.

In fact, that does ring, kind of ring a bell.

Yeah, you know, that this was your entryway into it.

You get to wear a 49ers shirt, but that's about as far as it goes.

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

Not exactly BFFs, no.

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.

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

Okay.

That was his big claim to fame.

But as far as his helping shape the 49ers, that would be a heck of a stretch.

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, a man Lombardi loves to quote, did not end well.

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 then then you're going to be probably shown the door

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.

Second from the left, second row, Michael Lombardi, who's listed as staff assistant.

And God bless the Dwight Schroots of the NFL.

I just wonder if we were going to weigh in on the assistant to the scout.

Now, that's an author photo right there by the way ray rado 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 uh super bowls that michael lombardi says he won on all the books he's written he's written another one uh recently same thing is touted um his bio his public bio in north carolina 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,

he wasn't quite sure about that either.

That's a step too far.

Okay.

Did he have a ring?

Did he get a ring?

No.

Only the coaches got rings.

Right.

And maybe the general manager, right?

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 ball for a pendant.

I had to look up a Balfour pendant.

It's like a high school class ring kind of thing.

It's sort of that you can buy off of Balfour.com.

Yeah, it's to commemorate graduation.

Kind of an epic burn.

I mean, that is a very inside championship ring jewelry burn.

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.

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.

And if you watch enough Mike Lombardi videos, as we have, you can see him, for instance, wearing what appears to be 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.

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

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 he did was cook it sandwiches right 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 i think it depends on how good the sandwiches are i mean they must have been phenomenal but to me it's like a busboy or or a waiter claiming that they won a james beard award and by the way football requires scouting assistance of all kinds yeah it's it's essential to the kitchen The question is, are you giving TED talks about it?

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?

Well, the work that he does next,

that timeline is chronicled, you guessed it, in Gridiron Genius.

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.

This is

how the University of North Carolina

program is born, right?

It's in Cleveland.

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 uh you know what's funny is doing the same old over and over again not saying hello to people uh not not getting outside advice and people who i talked to who were there at the time what i heard was that bellichick 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 wait wait they locked

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.

So Art Odell 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 wall thing,

they actually do hit it off.

Yes, that's a really good point.

This is a true close relationship.

They're attached at the hip in Cleveland for four years.

Right.

And so what happens, though, unfortunately for Mike Lombardi is that Belichick gets fired by the Browns in 95.

Armodell announces we're moving the franchise quite infamously to Baltimore.

And Mike Lombardi is left sort of figuring out where to go next.

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 Raiderland.

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.

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 a coach or some player who had caught his eye.

I mean, again, another icon of the game, another pillar of the game.

A well-known Maverick.

Track suits.

Right.

Track suits.

Slicked hair.

Slicked back hair.

The just win baby.

Just win, baby.

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

Constantly suing the league.

The league's constantly suing him.

If you love the dark side of the NFL, you love Al Davis.

Which is all to say that after a quick stop over 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 is 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.

And I think we should do a table read here.

Yeah, who do you want to be?

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

I will be Al Davis.

You be the press corps.

I get to be the scrum.

Okay.

Mike Lombardi was a loyal guy for years.

Mike Lombardi.

Yes, he was all right.

But he's taking shots at you.

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.

And seen?

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 Schell, calls out, quote, a fox in the hen house who was involved in, quote, character assassination.

And the fox, apparently, was who?

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 wasn't his fault, right?

That he's his roster was not the problem, right?

His, yeah, it was even though they were his players that finished 2-14, it was because they hired Archell instead of Bobby Petrino, which was you may remember from such motorcycle accidents as the one that happened at Arkansas in which he was wearing a neck braid.

Yeah, that was Michael Lombardi's choice.

And I think he was mad about that the whole year.

And so sort of threw a hissy fit behind the scenes and was badmouthing everybody in the organization to the media.

And then we come up to his last act as a as a GM in Oakland.

Right.

And this brings us back to the relationship he has with Balachek.

Yes.

So this, again, this bond that is formed in Cleveland, apparently,

according to everybody in Oakland, sustains to the point where...

Mike Lombardi is basically feeding information to Balachek about a very useful player that the Patriots did end up acquiring.

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.

Right.

He missed the last three games of the season with a, 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 going to be a star.

And of course, he goes to New England and ends up an all-pro.

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.

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

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 Balichek.

But now Al Davis accused all of us making those charges, and now he's going to have to face them.

But my reporting points to something even deeper and systemic with the problems Lombardi was having with everybody in in Oakland, not just Al Davis and not just Art Schell.

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 was always to lobby for good coverage of himself.

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.

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.

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.

Right.

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?

Absolutely.

You do favors for the media, whisper things, tell them about things, let them break a little news.

They're not going to bend over backwards to rip you a new one.

Right.

When the greatest football coach of all time is operating a dynasty premised on privacy, and there's one guy who's going to 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.

But you are starting to see a pattern, right?

Of Lombardi sort of protecting himself, of him almost having a sick sense of when he needs to get out in front of things that are going sideways.

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.

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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, Phlegm, 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 on the draft board?

I'm going for a Remora fish.

That's very good.

The parasitic fish that feed off the scraps of sharks.

I'm just going to go full of shit.

Yeah, devious.

Desperate.

Conniving.

Third tier.

Oh, that third tier is a good one.

And around real football people, a minor leaguer.

Oh, God.

This is on top of, by the way, WRAL, the local news outlet in Chapel Hill, reporting that

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 four and 12.

All of that was disastrous.

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 forward by Bill Belichick.

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 work together this is my so according to mike lombardi's unc bio again uh the official version his title was assistant to the coaching staff

which is again

made up.

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, Phlegm,

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

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

After firing him.

Yes.

Yeah.

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

I am told, according to multiple sources, Bill Balichek hired him to his staff.

He had full control of personnel decisions.

Bill Belichick hired his old friend, Mike Lombardy, to that vague job without telling anybody else.

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

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.

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.

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 Balichek in a rare instance of him overruling a personnel preference or desire: you got to 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.

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 Patriot 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/slash Head Coach Administration Berj Najarian, 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, Bill Balichek 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.

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.

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 is hired by Bill Balichak to this amorphous, you know, uh, assistant role in February 2014.

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

Yes, there's a one from uh 1984,

Fall Four Pendant, yes, and then here we have the one that he won in that 2014 NFL season, right?

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

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.

At least he was physically there.

Yes.

I know where you're going.

Phlem, I urge you to recall your NFL experience.

This is unbelievable.

And tell me, when did

an NFL team generally start having training camp

for the upcoming season?

So Lombardi, the Gridiron Genius, gets fired in June.

The Patriots basically start their season with training camp in July and August.

Yep.

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.

He wasn't even there.

And so I just got to 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.

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

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 am told by multiple Patriot sources is that Lombardi did remain in contact with Balachek throughout that 2016 season in a purely personal capacity.

And that after Super Bowl 51, the 28-3 comeback win against the Falcons in February 2017,

Something happened that still blows people who were in that building away.

Because Bill Belichick, 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,

that distinctive shape certainly seems to match.

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

He's introduced on television.

Right.

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.

No one thinks to go, wait a second, those dates don't match up.

I mean, this is unbelievable.

Because the other thing is, you don't have to do that.

You've technically won two Super Bowls.

Right.

You were actually there.

Yeah.

For two of them.

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

There is none, Pablo.

I mean,

I applaud them.

You can't claim it.

You can't claim it.

No, come on.

I mean, they're, you, they're 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.

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.

Yes.

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.

And you've got people not only calling him a Ramora fish or devious.

So he was out of the NFL for nine years.

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

Right.

That's an eternity in football years, right?

Nine years total.

But that's why I remember, and I think I may have even texted you this, when Lombardi came up with that asinine slogan that we're going to be the 33rd NFL team.

Yes.

My first reaction, I think a lot of people around the league, same thing.

It was like, how the f ⁇ would he know when the 33rd NFL franchise would look like?

He's been out of the league and unemployable for nine years.

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 are trying, again, just do some of the accounting here.

Um, we're looking at like 39 percent

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 percent.

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

And we're back live during a flex alert.

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So, Flam, as we reach the end of the 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 4 program directly in competition with Bill Balichek 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

stupid

because that's not actually what college players are into today

anyway

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.

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 brand, the Bill Belichick brand is not,

in your estimation of the college football landscape and marketplace this season.

It's not moving the needle.

Correct.

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

Yeah.

What would move the needle with these kids?

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

Right.

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 could just choose to go somewhere else.

You need to be an appealing destination.

It can't be a no-fun place, and it can't be just do your job.

I'm going to, you know, sell someone on this tiny roll 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

what if they could promise them cameos in an unending series of memes

no i don't i don't see that being a selling point either

oh

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 are a name or 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.

But the idea that Lombardi is so important to Belichick, you know, 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 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.

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.

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.

His constigliery.

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.

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 whom 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.

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

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.

Lombardi's giving her the art shell

treatment, right?

I mean, it's not a new thing.

It's not an original thing.

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.

Well, I don't want to get blocked.

Now I'm going to get blocked.

I got bad news for you.

Oh, here's the comment.

I'm just working on my.

I always got the sense that you were 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.

You want to know what the bigger lie, the bigger bullshit is than this gridiron genius?

These guys, all they ever talk about is culture is everything.

Everything,

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 two and four Carolina Tar Heels.

I mean, it could not be, well, I shouldn't say that.

It could get worse.

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

And I think what you see with Jared Goff is a little bit like there's two kinds of snakes that you come across, the Texas coral snake and the Mexican milksnake.

They both look exactly alike.

But the Texas coral snake is dangerous.

It's venomous.

It can kill you in a minute.

The Mexican milksnake can't do anything to you.

It's an imposter.

So Jared Goff.

But in the end,

it was Lombardi who kind of taught us.

Oh, all along.

Yeah.

He was telling us what this story really is.

Yeah.

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 simply turn out to be exactly the thing he's been warning NFL teams about, which is

he is

the gridiron Mexican milksnake.

Don't make me sing the song either.

I'm not singing the song.

My milksnake brings all this.

You know what?

Class dismissed.

Thank God.

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 Aberoma, Maxwell Carney, Brian Cortez, Juan Galindo, Patrick Kim, Neely Lohman, Rob McRae, Matt Sullivan, Claire Taylor, and Chris Tumanello.

Our studio engineering by RG Systems, sound design by Andrew Bersick and NGW Post, theme song, as always, by John Bravo.

And we will talk to you next time.

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