UNC head football coach Bill Belichick sat down with ESPN’s Christine Williamson during the ACC Spring Meetings at Amelia Island, FL Tuesday afternoon. Belichick addressed his transition to college football, his early impressions of the 2025 Tar Heels, his highly publicized relationship with Jordon Hudson and more.
Check out Belichick’s full comments, which have been lightly edited for clarity, below:
Q: How has this whole process been, taking it all in?
Belichick: It’s been great. It’s been great to get back into football and interact with all the other ACC coaches in the league and talk about the many changes in college football. It’s a new landscape. It’s a lot to learn and it’s been exciting to hear about all the changes that are coming. We’ll see how it all turns out.
Q: You’ve been now in Chapel Hill for six months. What has been the biggest takeaway so far?
Belichick: Just great support for the program. The alumni, the fans, the school. The kids have worked really hard. We’ve made a lot of progress on the field and in training and all that. Excited to see how much the team improved in spring ball. In the NFL, you don’t have those practices. You can’t practice in pads. And so in spring ball [in college], you can really see the amount of improvement and development that the individual players have made, and collectively as a team that we’re able to make during the spring. So that was exciting. Hopefully we have a lot more improvement to make, and will make, in the fall.
Q: What adjustments have you had to make as a coach?
Belichick: Football is still football. I mean, the players are younger, but they don’t have as many bad habits. So there’s just more of a development aspect to it, and it’s really just getting to learn the new team. I haven’t worked with any of these players before, so getting to know the ones who are on the team, and then some of the ones who are coming in the portal. And then we have some freshmen coming in in June, so there’s a lot of newness there. But it’s starting to come together and it’ll continue to come together and build. I’m just excited about the upswing for the entire year. It’ll be a long process. But I just want to get better day after day after day and keep stacking those good days together.
Q: What have you learned about your football team so far?
Belichick: Hardworking group. They really care, really try, have been very responsive to what we’ve asked them to do. And as I said, we’ve made a lot of improvement.
Q: You want to call UNC football “the 33rd NFL team.” What does that mean?
Belichick: Well, everything we do is a pro model. Head coach, general manager. And we want the players to develop professionally to their maximum football level, academically, and as a pro in life, to be ready to go into wherever life takes them, whether that’s owning a business or working for a company or whatever that happens to be. They’re all life lessons. It’s similar to the “college-to-pro” [model] that we used to have in the NFL, where the college players became pros. But now, the high school players and all college players are getting monetized. And so there’s an element of a professional job of football, as well as the academic side of the college scholar-athlete.
Q: When you look back at what this team has been able to do and your expectations for the team moving forward, what do you think is realistic for this season?
Belichick: Just try to stack good days together, come back, get ready, have the next day, build higher, just keep building to higher ground. Just stack those days together. It’s not about where we’re gonna be X number of months or weeks from now. It’s trying to take advantage every opportunity that comes along the way and make most of it.
Q: I know that you’re aware that your relationship with Jordon Hudson has been a headline over the last few months. A lot has come out in the last couple of days. How do you think that impacts your ability to coach this football team, if at all?
Belichick: That’s really off to the side. It’s a personal relationship, and she doesn’t have anything to do with UNC football. I’m excited to be back in the coaches’ meetings and getting ready for June and then August when we get to training camp. So June will be a big recruiting month for us, and then August, we’ll start getting ready for the season.
Q: And I know that you’re not on social media and you don’t read as much as everybody else, but when it comes to having conversations with your players, have you been able to talk about any of those things and the specifics of what’s going on off the field?
Belichick: Yeah, I talk to the players, when they come in to visit and so forth. Sure.
Q: And how have those conversations gone?
Belichick: Great. Again, we want to make the players the best that they can be, provide them the best opportunity on and off the field, and that’s what we’re about at UNC. We do the best for every single player we have.
Q: With all that being said, I can imagine that all the football days that you’ve coached outnumber the coaching days that you have moving forward. When you look at your career, at UNC and what you hope to do, what do you think would be a success?
Belichick: Just to stack good days on top of each other. We’ll see where the process takes us, but I believe in the process. I believe in what we’re doing, and we have a lot of people working really hard. We’ll just keep putting those together and see where it goes.
Q: Have you talked to [Duke head coach] Manny Diaz at all?
Belichick: Oh yeah. I’ve known Manny for a long time. Since he was at Miami and Penn State. We go back a long way.
Q: A little trash talk now that you guys are rivals?
Belichick: No, no, a lot of respect. Ton of respect for Manny, for what he did in Miami, what he did at Penn State, his career. Again, I have great respect for all the ACC coaches. It’s an excellent group.
Q: How do you feel about [the UNC-Duke] rivalry specifically?
Belichick: Well, it’s a rival. We will get to it when we get to it. There’s a lot of road to cover before we get to that. We’ll just take it one day at a time.
Featured image via Associated Press/Chris Seward
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