Mary Kay Cabot, a Browns reporter, attended the Pro Football Hall of Fame Gold Jacket Dinner on Friday in Canton, Ohio. While accepting the Bill Nunn Memorial Award, she gave a speech that shocked the audience. She strongly criticized Bill Belichick.
Cabot started covering the Cleveland Browns in 1991, the same year Bill Belichick became the team’s head coach. Today, Belichick is 73 years old, while his girlfriend Jordon Hudson is 24. That age gap prompted Cabot’s controversial remarks.
According to the New York Post, Cabot said in her speech: “Bill Belichick was the first Browns coach I ever covered… See, if you start with Bill Belichick, no one can rattle you after that. If Bill didn’t like something I wrote, he’d call and yell at me. If you asked a dumb question, he’d call you out. Eventually, I had to learn to stand up to him. During one of those shouting matches, I said, ‘If you don’t have the balls to say that to the guys, then don’t say it to me.’ Bam.”
.@MaryKayCabot with the one-liner of the year. I’m crying 😂🤣😂🤣
(🎥 via https://t.co/SaJ0lj4fsP) pic.twitter.com/e0NF10V3jy— Nicki Jhabvala (@NickiJhabvala) August 2, 2025
Cabot then added what she now believes about Belichick’s attitude toward her: “Now, I totally understand why Bill gave me such a hard time. I was 28 at the time — and he just couldn’t relate to a woman that old.”
The audience was stunned, though many laughed.
A comment that didn’t go unnoticed
To many viewers, Cabot’s joke about Belichick didn’t land well. On Hudson’s X account, someone posted Saturday:
“It’s not a great ‘laugh.’ No wonder so many despise the media — especially those who want to be the story instead of report on it.”
It seems that most Browns and NFL fans respect Belichick’s relationship with his much younger girlfriend. That’s why Cabot’s comment felt completely out of place and far from funny — the exact opposite of what she likely intended.
