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Sports

Inscrutable Maniac Bill Belichick Denies Patriots are Having...Watermelon Rolls?

Whatever the hell that means, man!
When you stand falsely accused of having eaten watermelon rolls. Photo by Bob DeChiara-USA TODAY Sports

The biggest news heading into the final, and worthless, last week of the NFL preseason is Bill Belichick's diet. During an unusually candid press conference this morning, the New England Patriots head coach was seemingly playful (for him) with the gathered media and engaged in some collegial back-and-forth. Belichick was asked if he and the Pats front office had an idea of who would and would not be making rosters across the league, and responded with equal parts contempt and just the slightest bit of insight into the inner-workings of his brain.

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So first, he obviously does answer the question, albeit in a scoffing and passive aggressive way. Of course we have a good idea, the unspoken first clause of the answer goes, "what do you think we're doing?" Then Bill adds a little bit of personal flavor with a thing that I—and many others judging from the reactions to this statement—have never heard of: a watermelon roll. It's unclear from the response what exactly a watermelon roll is, it could be a lot of things, really:

  • a contest where people roll watermelons down a hill
  • a shorthand for his favorite Fruit Roll-Up flavor
  • Watermelon…on a roll?

That's basically I'll I've got. Except for this one, random thing from your local Friendly's chain after a careful non Trump News Google searching. (Friendly's for those of you not from the East Coast is basically the chain version of your local greasy spoon/soda shop.) It is not called a Watermelon Roll, it is called a Wattamelon Roll and it is, as you can see in the following video, a "refreshing Watermelon and Lemon Sherbet with Rich Chocolate Chip Seeds."

Now, I grew up on the East coast, and spent considerable time in one Friendly's or another and never once came across one of these things. Belichick, who has lived a richer and fuller life than me, is a Maine and Massachusetts man—Friendly's was founded in Mass.—and apparently has. Not only that, it seems that, for him, the Wattamelon Roll is the picture of laziness. If a person were to shirk all the duties of their job the first thing that pops into the Belichick's mind is that they must be just sitting around cramming Refreshing Watermelon and Lemon Sherbet with Rich Chocolate Chip Seeds into their faces.

I wonder if anyone has ever been cut because Belichick found them eating Wattamelon Rolls. Any disgruntled Pats fans out there with a story to tell, hit me up.