On Jan. 19, 2024, a user on X (formerly Twitter) posted a photo that purportedly showed former New England Patriots head coach Bill Belichick standing in front of a cashier at a Chick-fil-A restaurant in the Midtown neighborhood of Atlanta, Georgia.
"No way I jus seen Bill Belichick at Chick-fil-A in Midtown," the user's caption read, just one day after CBS Sports' senior NFL insider Josina Anderson was reporting that Belichick was expected to become the next head coach of the Atlanta Falcons.
Just eight days earlier, Belichick had parted ways with New England after 24 years – a time during which he, his staff and players led the team to six Super Bowl titles, per ESPN.com.
At press time for this story, no official announcement had been made regarding a new head coach being hired by the Atlanta Falcons.
However, we did find out at least one thing for certain: the photo of Belichick at Chick-fil-A was at least nearly five years old.
According to a Reddit post that we found after performing a reverse image search, the picture of Belichick visiting a Chick-fil-A restaurant was taken on or before April 13, 2019 in Gambrills, Maryland. Snopes was not able to immediately confirm these details of the date and location. However, again, the date of the old post made clear that the photo had nothing to do with any more recent happenings in 2024.
One commenter under the Reddit post added, "Bill Belichick-fil-A." Another user replied to them, saying, "Scrolled through the comments to make sure this was said."