CHARLOTTE \u2014 This time last year, Bill Belichick wasn\u2019t sure what his depth chart would look like. He wasn\u2019t sure how his quarterbacks, neither of whom participated in spring practice, would perform.<\/p>\n
But personally, he wasn\u2019t sure if he\u2019d like coaching college football.<\/p>\n
\u201cI like coaching in college. I mean, really,\u201d Belichick said on Friday. \u201cI didn\u2019t know whether I would or I wouldn\u2019t, but I do. It\u2019s been great.\u201d<\/p>\n
He pointed to the NFL calendar, which only allows coaches nine weeks to work with players, aid their development and get to know them. In college, Belichick can spend January to August doing it, with only a few breaks in between.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt gives you more of an impact on the players. You get to know them better,\u201d he said. \u201cAnd I love coaching, and I love helping them. I love the opportunity to do that, and there\u2019s just more of it here. And those guys are really receptive.\u201d<\/p>\n
Belichick\u2019s maiden voyage into college football\u2019s choppy seas came with plenty of difficult moments. The Tar Heels stumbled to a 2-5 start and lost their first five games to power conference opponents, with the first three coming by an average of 29 points.<\/p>\n
But a pair of close losses that followed set the trajectory for the Tar Heels\u2019 two ACC wins, against Syracuse and Stanford. UNC did lose its final three games to each of its in-state rivals \u2014 NC State, Wake Forest and Duke \u2014 for the first time since 1989. The Tar Heels also missed out on a bowl game for the first time since 2018.<\/p>\n
This year, Belichick feels his team is ahead of where it was a season ago heading into preseason camp.<\/p>\n
The enthusiasm peaked with the long-awaited season opener against TCU and reached a fever pitch when the Tar Heels scored on their opening drive, igniting fireworks over Kenan Stadium. TCU scored the game\u2019s next 41 points. This year, one of Belichick\u2019s tasks will be recapturing some of the excitement of the season\u2019s opening weekend.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s no doubt there\u2019s still a lot of enthusiasm and optimism, particularly within our department, about where we can go,\u201d athletic director Steve Newmark told The Athletic on Friday. \u201cWe laugh a lot that one thing that is in short supply in college athletics is patience, and we understand it. Everybody wants immediate gratification. When I was on the other side of the aisle and just a fan, I wanted the same thing, and I agonized over every loss and thought the world was falling. We lost. There\u2019s no doubt that last year we didn\u2019t have the results that we had hoped for. Yeah, there were some signs of brilliance, and then some signs of, hey, we need some work. And so, our goal is really to show continuous improvement. Coach Belichick and I use that term a lot, and that\u2019s kind of the barometer that we\u2019ll measure ourselves going forward.\u201d<\/p>\n
Belichick\u2019s first season in college football was full of lessons, though he found college football to be not wholly different from the NFL.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt wasn\u2019t like I\u2019m learning a new sport like I\u2019m coaching soccer or something,\u201d Belichick said. \u201cThe thing I learned the most about was just the people in the university that you build relationships with, our training staff, some of our assistant coaches, the academics, the people that you work with in the other departments. It\u2019s working with everybody and trying to get things done as efficiently, quickly and productively as possible, and they\u2019ve all been great. They\u2019ve all been great to work with, but there\u2019s also a learning curve and a time investment.\u201d<\/p>\n
Part of that relationship-building is with Newmark, who officially took over for the retired Bubba Cunningham on July 1 after a year working under Cunningham to help ease the transition.<\/p>\n
Belichick has a new set of quarterbacks competing for a starting job after 2025 starter Gio Lopez transferred to Wake Forest, backup Max Johnson went to Georgia Southern and four-star freshman Bryce Baker left for Virginia Tech. In their place are Wisconsin graduate transfer Billy Edwards Jr. and Texas A&M transfer Miles O\u2019Neill. Belichick told local reporters Friday the race is open with \u201cno leader.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cOur role is to put Coach Belichick and his staff in a position to be able to succeed,\u201d Newmark said. \u201cIt\u2019s about dollars. It\u2019s about caliber of facilities, and quite frankly, it\u2019s, are you giving them the resources necessary to be able to recruit players of a caliber to achieve the level of success we want?<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd then with Coach Belichick and the staff, I think it\u2019s also making sure that we lean in and provide support in areas that he may not have the same level of familiarity, but he has so much expertise in player development, and so we\u2019ve had to lean in and make sure that you know our well-established compliance department and our academic support, and they interact.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"CHARLOTTE \u2014 This time last year, Bill Belichick wasn\u2019t sure what his depth chart would look like. He…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":807053,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[563],"tags":[64,63,594,596,1406,85],"class_list":["post-807052","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-football","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-college-football","tag-football","tag-north-carolina-tar-heels","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/807052","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=807052"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/807052\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/807053"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=807052"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=807052"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=807052"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}