Bill Belichick detailed some of the things he’s noticed in his months working with college players compared to his time in the NFL on Thursday at ACC media day.
The new North Carolina coach was asked about the differences between coaching college players and professional players and noted how quickly college players show improvement compared to players in the NFL.
“The great thing about working with the college players is just the growth and the development that we’ve seen,” Belichick said in his news conference. “ … Saw a little bit of that last year when I was at Washington with [Huskies coach Jedd Fisch] and [current North Carolina defensive coordinator Steve Belichick] out there. To see how much the players improve from the spring to the start of training camp and this year of course we haven’t started training camp but through the course of the spring the amount of improvement our players made in those 15 days — most of which were in pads — was something that you never saw in the NFL because you could never wear pads in the offseason.”
In case you were wondering, Belichick was not asked about his relationship with Jordon Hudson during his time at the main podium.
Belichick, who spent the 2024 season out of coaching, was hired in December to replace Mack Brown at North Carolina despite never coaching at the college level. Belichick got his first coaching job in the NFL in the 1970s as a low-level assistant and worked his way up through the ranks in the NFL.
He’s just the second Super Bowl-winning coach to coach a college football team after winning a Super Bowl. The other, Bill Walsh, returned to Stanford for a second stint after winning three titles with the San Francisco 49ers.
“On the college end, you’re right, the players are a little bit younger and less skilled, sometimes that’s an advantage — there are fewer bad habits to break,” Belichick said. “But I would say also the players are much more receptive to coaching. They haven’t had as long with the way they were doing it through college career, maybe even through their pro years where they started develop some habits that they were comfortable with and they were a little harder to change. I’d say our players, they’ve been very receptive to everything we’ve asked them to do.”
Belichick has brought in numerous coaches with NFL experience for his staff. Steve Belichick coached with him in New England and offensive coordinator Freddie Kitchens is a longtime NFL assistant who was the head coach of the Cleveland Browns in 2019.
The six-time Super Bowl winner also noted his roster has 70 players who were not on the team in 2024. North Carolina, which opens the season in Week 1 on Labor Day against TCU, brought in the No. 8 transfer portal class in the country according to On3. The Tar Heels had 41 players transfer out after Brown’s departure, and 42 arrived, including South Alabama QB Gio Lopez, Troy offensive tackle Daniel King and Boise State linebacker Andrew Simpson.
