This had been an uncharacteristically boring winter on the coaching carousel … until last Thursday, when I got this text: “Be ready for BB to UNC.”
When that popped up on my phone from a source who is usually very accurate, I was perplexed. BB???
The only “BB” I could think of in coaching circles was Bill Belichick, but that didn’t seem to make any sense. His close friend Nick Saban had just walked away from college coaching frustrated, beaten down by a seismic shift in the sport in the wake of the transfer portal and NIL era.
Belichick is 72, a year younger than Saban, and he’d never spent a day working in the college ranks. And at North Carolina? The Tar Heels were really replacing one 70-plus year-old with another?
The source of that text, of course, was right.
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Belichick to North Carolina still seemed far-fetched until last Sunday afternoon, when other college football and NFL sources said they heard it was trending in Belichick’s direction. On Monday, he went on “The Pat McAfee Show” and made his case (sort of) to any doubters (perhaps specifically to those in the North Carolina administration) of why this will work. On Tuesday, he was hired.
But what about the NFL? What about his attempts to break Don Shula’s all-time NFL wins record? A source close to Belichick told me earlier this week: “He wants to coach football and he doesn’t think he’s gonna get hired anywhere (in the NFL).”
That seemed wild, too, but here we are.
There feels like there is some precedent for this move — Bill Walsh, Herm Edwards, Deion Sanders — but there isn’t.
Belichick is one of the best NFL coaches of all time. But he has never coached college football before, and that definitely is reason to have some doubts, even if, on Tuesday at his introductory news conference, he said he “always wanted to coach” in the ranks.
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He has spent considerable time around a college program recently, though. At Washington, where one of his proteges, former Patriots assistant Jedd Fisch, runs a model with much of it based on his decade-plus as an NFL coach.
Fisch’s defensive coordinator is Steve Belichick, Bill’s son. The elder Belichick has been to a lot of the Huskies’ practices, sat in on coaches meetings and spent time around the team. He has seen how his defensive system is being run at the college level, and now has some proof that college players can make it work. Under Steve Belichick, Washington, despite having to replace nine of 11 starters from last year’s defense, ranks No. 27 in the nation in yards per play allowed — up from No. 79 last year.
But the elder Belichick has not been around for recruiting weekends or for official visits and a lot of the elements that are integral to what make up a modern college football program outside of the actual football.
Saban, one of college football’s best coaches, used to work with Belichick on his staff when Belichick was the head man of the Cleveland Browns. Saban had been in the college coaching world before his time on the Browns, and he would return to it, coming as close to mastering it as anyone in the modern college football world has.
The two coaches — 70-something, defensive minded guys — are lumped together for good reason because of their unprecedented success, but they are hardly interchangeable, even if both left the sidelines last winter to become TV stars talking about the game they know better than anyone. Both proved to be wizards getting the most out of their players.
That model of developing young men into NFL players that Belichick spoke about earlier this week on McAfee’s show is something Saban created and carried out for over a decade in Tuscaloosa. It was often an uncompromising and unforgiving standard that he held players and his assistants to.
Saban thrived at Alabama in spite of constant turnover on his coaching staff because he had a critical core group of staffers in support roles. That piece of it, I’ve been told by former players, has been one of the most significant but overlooked aspects of the Tide’s success.
Saban practically collected sports psychologists and deep-thinkers to figure out the best ways to reach, keep and support young athletes. He also cultivated other staffers, like former Tide players, who could bridge the gap between the culture and mindset Saban had established and the culture and mindset of the 18- and 19-year-olds trying to acclimate to his program.
Saban, of course, left coaching, making his decision not long after he’d conducted some 40-plus exit interviews and came away disappointed and reeling by a lot of what he had heard from players: How can I get more money? What’s in it for me?
That is the world Belichick is jumping into.
Not the one that Saban came back to from the NFL in 2007. The one in 2024, with revenue sharing and a fluid transfer portal.
Belichick is considered by his coaching colleagues as the brightest football mind of his generation, a brilliant teacher who just sees the game — in all phases — at a different level than everyone else, one NFL coach told me over text a few hours after the UNC news broke. People who have worked with him describe him as a guy who loves to develop players and is the best at fundamental football.
Ohio State offensive coordinator Chip Kelly, a native New Englander who returned to college football from the NFL, became UCLA’s head coach in the pre-NIL/portal era but ended up constantly trying to swim upstream in the transition. He tried to employ the model he told The Athletic that Belichick had won big with in New England.
“When you talk to (Belichick), he values intelligence, character and toughness,” Kelly told me a few years back. “Those are the three big things that he’s always looking for in a player. He wants to be able to count on you every day, to think, ‘If he has a work ethic, and a toughness and is smart, this guy will fit for what we’re gonna do because it’s grind.’”
Those are all important attributes and helped his teams go 25-13 in his last three seasons in Westwood, but without an NIL war chest or a frenetic recruiting machine staying in the chase after blue-chip talent, Kelly’s Bruins didn’t look anything like the teams he had at Oregon, where he went 46-7 from 2009-12.
Belichick protege Bill O’Brien has done well, both in his two-year stint taking over a reeling Penn State program a decade again, and now at Boston College, where the Eagles went 7-5 in his debut season, employing many of the principles he had learned under Belichick. He even hired Belichick’s long-time right-hand man Berj Najarian to be his chief of staff at Boston College.
But those men aren’t Belichick. No one is.
Kids will want to play for him, but how many and which ones?
“The issue is he can stand there and say he’s won six Super Bowls,” said a Power 4 head coach. “That’ll work until they say, ‘Well, how much are you gonna pay me?’ Is he gonna give out his cell phone to 200 16-year-old recruits?”
Belichick may have gotten used to dealing with agents and developed those relationships, but those were certified NFL agents. The reps of most college players are often not licensed but will be calling Belichick and his staff to say they’re acting on behalf of players. It might make him want to puke after hearing what some of those demands will be.
An NFL defensive coach who had worked in the Patriots system wondered if younger recruits will care about who he is. “Selling them on the idea of preparing them for the NFL sounds good when they needed to get to the NFL to make money,” the coach said, “but now, the big names can make enough for a lifetime without even getting to the NFL.”
The second coach, who has worked in college football, also wondered about how Belichick’s NFL organizational model will work at UNC of letting the coaches coach and the personnel staff just handle recruiting. “That sounds like a great idea, but they still have the 20-hour rule, right? So they still have that limitation.”
The hardest part for NFL coaches adapting to the college calendar is that it’s more of a marathon than a sprint, even though the NFL season is much longer. The offseason for college football coaches is more demanding and time-intensive. As one former NFL coach who transitioned to life as a college staffer explained, “There’s not a big summer break like you get in the NFL, when coaches can truly unwind. Phone is off. ‘No one call me, I won’t call anyone, leave me alone.’ College isn’t as hard of a season (not even close) but it’s much more year-round.”
North Carolina stepped up to double its salary offer to Belichick from earlier in the week, going from $5 million to $10 million a year. That bodes well for the commitment UNC seems willing to make to compete on the financial side of things. He’s already hired a veteran NFL general manager in Mike Lombardi. I would expect his son Steve to join him in Chapel Hill and bring an assistant or two from Washington with him. It also wouldn’t be surprising if Joe Judge, who spent three seasons on Saban’s staff at Alabama before working for almost a decade under Belichick in New England, ends up in Chapel Hill. He’s now an analyst on Lane Kiffin’s Ole Miss staff. It will be fascinating to see who else Belichick hires.
So will he be successful? I think first we need to define what success is there.
The Tar Heels have finished in the Top 25 only two times since Mack Brown left for the first time in 1997. But they have had 10 seasons in that stretch where they won at least eight games. My hunch is that Belichick will get the Tar Heels back into the Top 25 within the first two seasons.
The ACC ain’t the SEC. It’s no meat grinder, especially regarding talent. Belichick no doubt saw SMU come into the league in its first season and play for the conference championship and make it to the Playoff. The Mustangs’ average recruiting ranking over the past five classes was 70th.
Also in the ACC: Manny Diaz led Duke to a 9-3 record in his first year. Fran Brown just got Syracuse to nine wins in his first season too. If you look at it from that standpoint, Belichick doesn’t even need to find his new Tom Brady to get the Tar Heels into the Playoff — he just needs to be better than the other guys at the small detail stuff and things he’s always been better than everyone else at.
But I’d be stunned if Belichick stays for more than three years. Though his contract is for $50 million over five years, only the first three years are guaranteed (and his buyout to leave drops from $10 million to $1 million next June, according to the proposed deal released Thursday). I just think that the existence as a college football head coach now will ultimately drive him away. It’s like dog years — three years feels like 21. There’s just too much chaos, too much dysfunction, too many clowns he’ll have to deal with.
At some point, Bill Belichick will realize, much like his old friend Nick Saban did, “I just don’t need all of this. Not at this age. Not after all I’ve accomplished.”
(Photo: Jared C. Tilton / Getty Images)
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