Bill Belichick downplays challenges of playing in different environments: 'Home, away, in a parking lot'

The first game of the Bill Belichick era at North Carolina was… in one word… a nightmare.

Although the Tar Heels marched down the field and immediately took a 7-0 lead, TCU went on a 41-0 run to take a 41-7 lead over Carolina with 6:56 remaining in the third quarter. The final score settled at 48-14 in favor of the Horned Frogs, marking a rough start to the Belichick era in Chapel Hill.

North Carolina however will have a good opportunity to bounce back on Saturday when it travels to Charlotte for a rare away game for a power-four program against a program from the American Conference. It will mark the first away game of Belichick’s college football coaching career.

Belichick was asked on Wednesday if playing in that environment, which hosts around 15,000 fans, will be one of the smallest crowds he’s ever coached in front of. Along with reiterating that they can’t control the crowd, he downplayed the challenge of playing in different environments.

Belichick jokes that Carolina will play ‘home, away or in a parking lot’

“Well during the COVID year we played in front of a couple hundred people in bigger stadiums,” Belichick said. “You know again, we can control what we can control. We control how we prepare and how we play. However many people are or aren’t there or whatever the weather is and all those things we have no control over. We can just control our preparation, our performance, our attitude and how competitive we play. That’s what we’re gonna focus on.”

“Whatever it is, it is. We honestly take the approach of we’ll play anywhere anytime. Day or night. Home, away, in a parking lot. In Ireland. In North Carolina. In California. Wherever it is. We gotta be ready to play when the games are scheduled and we can control what we can control.”

North Carolina‘s 48-14 (34 point) loss to TCU was the largest home loss by an ACC team in a season opener against an unranked team since Duke got shutout 38-0 by East Carolina on Sept. 2, 2000. It looks to fare much better in the second game of the Belichick era.

“They outplayed us, outcoached us, and they were just better than we were tonight,” Belichick said following the loss. “That’s all there was to it. They did a lot more things right than we did.”

Kick-off for Saturday’s game between the Tar Heels and 49ers is scheduled for 7:00 PM on ESPN+.