Pablo Torre's Bill Belichick reporting sparks a fresh feud with Bill Simmons
The story that keeps on giving keeps finding new ways to give.
Pablo Torre's thorough and detailed reporting on former Patriots coach Bill Belichick's decidedly un-Belichickian late-career turn has generated plenty of attention. And, as Belichick and Jordon Hudson have learned, with attention comes scrutiny.
Ben Axelrod of AwfulAnnouncing.com explains that Boston native, Patriots superfan, and ultra-popular podcast host Bill Simmons took a few shots at Torre during a study of the ridiculously far-fetched 1978 football film, Heaven Can Wait, in which Warren Beatty's character (Rams quarterback Joe Pendleton) dies too soon, enters the body of multimillionaire Leo Farnsworth as rectification for the error, buys the team, and makes himself the starting quarterback in advance of the Super Bowl.
'Pablo Torre would've done a long podcast about Leo Farnsworth trying to practice with the team, and then done a media tour about it afterwards,' Simmons said. 'I've never seen anybody dine on a stupider story for a week and a half while pretending you're a journalist. What the fuck was that? Seriously.'
Added Simmons: 'Belichick's dating a girl. 'Oh, let me do nine shows about it.' Settle the fuck down.'
The Torre media tour wasn't planned. People wanted to talk to him about the Belichick story. That's how he ended up on #PFTPM last week; I asked him to do it.
The reason was simple. People can't get enough of the story. Our traffic proves it, over and over again.
For instance, our top four stories for May 2025 related to Belichick and his 24-year-old girlfriend/handler/publicist/idea mill/creative muse Jordon Hudson.
But while a certain amount of flak from others in the media is to be expected for anyone whose success sparks natural and predictable resentment, Torre appears to be ready to engage Simmons.
'Since you have such a strong public opinion about my work,' Torre said to Simmons on Twitter, 'I happen to have a few questions for you, specifically. Unless you're afraid of [Pablo Torre Finds Out] and someone just 'pretending to be a journalist,' of course.'
We don't know what the questions are. We don't know whether Simmons will answer them. But we know that, if Pablo Torre becomes sufficiently curious about something, he'll make it his mission to find out.
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