Bill Belichick praises buy-in from North Carolina players in offseason

After months of roundtable discussions, the Bill Belichick era at North Carolina is nearly upon us. The six-time Super Bowl winning head coach will coach his first college football game on September 1 against TCU.

Belichick opened up about the buy-in from his players this offseason at a media opportunity on June 10.

“These are great kids to work with,” Belichick said. “They really are. They’ve had great buy-in. There have been really no problems. These guys are on time, they’re early and they work hard. I put them to work in the weight room and out on the field. They spend time on their own doing extra training or coming over and watching film and that type of thing. They’ve made a ton of improvement. These guys are a lot better than they were when we started in January on every level. And so it’s exciting to see where that’s gonna take us.”

Coming off a season in which the Tar Heels went just 6-7 (3-5), Belichick brought in the No. 8 ranked Transfer Portal class in the country. The class is headlined by former Washington cornerback Thaddeus Dixon, South Alabama quarterback Gio Lopez, and Boise State linebacker Andrew Simpson.

Belichick high on his team; boasts NFL prospects

Belichick continued to boast about his team and revealed that he believes their roster boasts a crop of future NFL prospects.

“Maybe we’re close to the peak or only a quarter of the way up the hill. I don’t know we’ll see. But the improvement has been really good and I think the players based on the improvement that we made from January to April… I’ll let them speak for it I don’t want to speak for them… but I’d say that it’s kind of generated some momentum. If we keep working like this we’re gonna continue to get better. These guys have dreams and aspirations beyond North Carolina and I think that’s realistic for a lot of players, so they’re working really hard not only to get the most out of theirselves individually but they’re great teammates. That’s where we’re trending.”

Belichick is just one of three former NFL coaches that will be coaching in the ACC this season, joining Stanford interim head coach Frank Reich (six seasons) and Boston College head coach Bill O’Brien (seven seasons). In his 29 seasons as a head coach in the NFL, the newest Tar Heel accrued 302 wins.