Bill Belichick Q&A: Clemson Game Week, ACC Opener for UNC

CHAPEL HILL, N.C. — Coming off last week’s first bye on the schedule, North Carolina returns to action on Saturday against Clemson at Kenan Stadium. The matchup with the Tigers opens ACC league play for the Tar Heels, and marks coach Bill Belichick’s first conference game on the college level.

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Belichick met with reporters on Tuesday at Kenan Football Center, before heading out to the team’s afternoon practice session. Watch the question-and-answer session in its entirety below, and scroll down to read some noteworthy excerpts from his comments.

Opening Statement

Belichick: “Well, it’s a big week, excited to get back on the field. Not that we weren’t on the field last week, but we’re really in direct competition and preparation for Clemson. It’s exciting to have our first ACC game. Clemson has a great program, a ton of respect for Coach Swinney, his staff, players, and the program they’ve run there. I’ve had a lot of guys from Clemson through the years. Those guys are tough, they love football and they do it the right way. So a lot of respect for them. We’re excited to get going. I think we made some improvements last week that we needed to make and kind of reset a few things. So hopefully that’ll show up this week, but it’s a good football team that we’re prepared for, and they’ve lost a couple of tough games. They have obviously a lot of talent, have some very explosive players on both sides of the ball, and a very experienced team as well. So, they definitely know what they’re doing. Turnovers have hurt them in a couple of those losses, probably all of them. So, a couple plays here or there, and this team could easily be 4-0. So, we’ll need to play a solid game all the way around. That’s what we’re getting ready to do, and I’m excited to prepare for these guys and be ready to go on Saturday, 12 o’clock kickoff. So a get-up-and-go game will be a little different timing for us at the start. But again, we’re excited. Look forward to all of it.”

Is there an update on Gio Lopez’s injury, and is Max Johnson taking reps with the first team this week?

Belichick: “We’ll see what he’s able to do today. He didn’t do much last week, but he’s been in here every day, working hard, getting treatment and we’ll see where he’s at today. … Max is getting reps, all three quarterbacks are. So we’ll see how all that plays out, and we’ll see what Gio’s availability is as we go through the week. But you know, we haven’t practiced since we had a kind of situational practice on Thursday. We haven’t really practiced since Wednesday. So from Wednesday to Tuesday, a lot of time has elapsed here, and we’ll see where Gio is today.”

How has this offensive line performed despite injury? And how will Austin Blaske and others fit together as the line gets healthy?

Belichick: “Ultimately, the conversation comes down to getting your five best players on the field, but also playing the best combination, the five players who, in combination, will play the most effectively. So it’s kind of like in baseball, it’s hard to have two catchers, even if they might be your two best players. So we have to kind of balance out what’s our best line versus trying to get our best players on the field. And with Blaske, he’s awesome because he can really play every position. He’s played center, guard, both tackle spots, so he gives us a lot of flexibility, and I think it will help us find the rest of the line and the consistency with it. But Moore and King have done a pretty solid job on the right side, and so we’ll just kind of work through the rest of it here, but having Austin back has been a big lift for us. Obviously, he hasn’t played in several weeks, and the Central Florida game was a quick turnaround for him that I thought he handled himself pretty well, and he looked better last week. I’m sure he’ll get better as he gets more reps out there, and we’ll have to figure out what the best combination is. But glad we have him back.”

Can you shed light on the departure of a few players who left the team last week, and explain if there is a common reason for any or all of them?

Belichick: “It was really personal reasons with all three players, which I’m not comfortable talking about. But it was personal situations, two of them kind of health-related. … Any time a player makes a decision for personal reasons not to play, that’s probably the right decision, and not one that is for me to try to talk him out of because there are other factors at work. In some cases, a lot deeper than what I’m qualified to even talk about or shed light on, so that’s really up to them. Players getting injured and coming back and so forth, that’s part of a normal process, but players that have other things going on, which, unfortunately, is part of it, whether it’s health, family, so forth, that’s some things they have to make decisions on. I think probably every team has one or two players in that category, somewhere along the line, at least. I would say that was true for me in the NFL, in a different way, but kind of the same thing. There are other things in life that eventually, for some people, have to overtake football as a priority.”