How Bob Diaco Connected With Bill Belichick

CHAPEL HILL, N.C. — For the first time as a member of the Tar Heel program, North Carolina defensive line coach Bob Diaco spoke with reporters Thursday morning.

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A true college football journeyman, Diaco played at Iowa in the mid-1990s and has coached at programs including Notre Dame, LSU, Oklahoma and, ironically enough this week, Virginia. So how did he end up in Chapel Hill? Diaco opened his Thursday press conference by sharing a candid story about how he first connected with his now head coach, Bill Belichick.

Read the excerpt below, and see above to watch Diaco’s full media availability…

“So in either 2011 or maybe 2012 I was at Notre Dame as the defensive coordinator, and (Bill Belichick) was scouting or talking at one of our clinics. Him and Coach (Brian) Kelly were close, are close and that’s when we first met, formally. How I got here (at UNC), that’s a much longer story, where the rubber finally met the road with Coach and I. I can give you the Cliffs Notes version.

So in 2020… Didn’t really fit, I had a hard time with the program (at Purdue), got let go. It was just a bad time — really a blessing for me, honestly, in my life — but an adverse time. I’m not sure it was a fit as so much it might have been 2020 and Covid just ravaging the world. So it’s hard to really look at any of those moments too deeply in terms of being a fit or not a fit. But I’m at home, it goes down like that.

“In terms of professionally, you’re rock bottom, it’s hard. So I had to restart everything and I didn’t have anything. I had a computer. I didn’t have a digital editing system, nothing. So I created a goal for myself with a plan. One of them was to do my own season for that fall. So I had selected 12 teams. I selected them based on defensive systems that were similar to what I had done. And I went NFL, college, NFL, college, NFL, college, NFL, college.

“I was going to do the whole thing like I was going to game plan it. I was going to walk or exercise while the team might have been at practice — very part of it was going to be exactly… I was going to wake up and go to work, which happened to be just kind of at a desk in the corner of the room, literally. So I did all that, and I thought, can I create these advances? That was going to be the hardest part, because I didn’t have any video, I didn’t have a video system, I didn’t have a clicker, I didn’t have anything.

“So I just literally downloaded a reel player. Then I started sending Omaha Steak packages to video coordinators that I knew, and they would send me zipped video, and I would unzip it, which I learned how to do… these video systems have their own analytics systems, so I didn’t have that opportunity.

“How do I create real statistical data without having a video editing system? Okay, Excel. Between my children and watching YouTube, I had to learn how to do Excel and drill downs and pivot tables and create real statistical data once I had the video taken off, which was a challenge unto itself. A reel player, if you’ve ever worked on the computer, if you’re not careful with your finger, it goes either all the way back to the beginning or all the way to the end. So without having each play clipped, it was a challenge.

“Took me a while, but I created four advances, and I liked them. I thought, you what, I’m going to send these to the teams. Not just just because I was interested in, maybe they’d like them, generate something. And one person called me, one person: Bill Belichick.

“The first four games went NFL, college, NFL, college. And I sent them to either the head coach or defensive coordinator, whoever I knew, like for one of the college teams the coordinator was a GA for me.

“One person called: Bill Belichick. He said, ‘How’d you make this?’ Actually, he said ‘Where did you get this?’ I told him I made it. He said ‘How’d you make it?’ I told him I made it at my desk in my bedroom. So, on a personal level, he blew a lot of wind in my sail at that time.

“That’s 2020 so over the next two years he engaged me a little bit more, a little bit more with potential projects or things, or look at this, or what do you think about that? So I’m not going to get into the specifics of that, because it was between him and I, but as I performed for him, I think he got more confidence in me over that time. Then I ended up getting a job at LSU with Coach Kelly, and then it became more of a scouting conversation at that point, of players that I had either crossed over with in the SEC or were on our team.

“Then mountains moved, and he ends up at UNC and called so just I feel blessed. And I had already pointed to this program, not just because Coach Belichick is the greatest football coach of all time, which he is. He is, at least from my perspective, after doing this for 30 years and playing before that. I played for Hayden Fry at Iowa. I worked for Hayden Fry at Iowa, and then all the people that I worked for, there’s really nobody like Coach Belichick…”