Mike Priefer Joins Bill Belichick With Like-Minded Special Teams Approach

CHAPEL HILL, N.C. — Looking at the Bell tower makes Mike Priefer remember moments in his youth, spending some of his Saturdays in Chapel Hill on North Carolina’s campus by selling programs before UNC football games.

His father, Chuck, coached six seasons at North Carolina as a defensive backs coach and defensive line coach, from 1978–83, before the family moved to Green Bay. That exposure to football early on led to him becoming a coach himself, as he’s spent eight seasons in college and 21 in the NFL. He took a two-season hiatus after his last year in the NFL as a special teams coordinator.

Priefer joined Bill Belichick’s first coaching staff back in January as a special teams coordinator, and he seeks to use his range of experience to make the Tar Heels competitive in that third phase.

“I think when you bring in a head coach that’s been in the league for, what, 50 years, and a special teams coordinator that’s been a league for a long time,” Priefer said on Wednesday, “having those experiences that we have, he understood and we had talked about the success we had in the NFL and special teams, and the places I’ve been. And trying to bring that to the collegiate environment, the schemes obviously will be a little bit different. The players are much younger, so the techniques and fundamentals that we teach, we have to make sure we cover those more often than we would in the NFL. But those are the conversations we’ve had about player development.”

Priefer began his coaching career in 1994 as a graduate assistant at Navy after playing quarterback and wide receiver there from 1991-94. After the 1996 season, he coached on Youngstown State’s staff for two seasons as a special teams coordinator, offensive tackles coach and tight ends coach. He made stops at VMI (special teams and linebackers) and Northern Illinois (special teams and defensive tackles) before landing in the NFL in 2002 with the Jacksonville Jaguars.

Priefer was an assistant special teams coordinator in Jacksonville for one season before taking on the same role for the New York Giants from 2003-05. Priefer spent the rest of his NFL career as the special teams coordinator for the Kansas City Chiefs (2006-08), Denver Broncos (2009-10), Minnesota Vikings (2011-18) and Cleveland Browns (2019-22). Freddie Kitchens, now UNC’s offensive coordinator, was the Cleveland head coach in 2019 when Priefer ran the Browns special teams.

Priefer said he admired Belichick from afar while in the NFL, but never actually met him until interviewing for the special teams job in January. When he got the initial phone call from Belichick, though, he had an immediate interest.

“Coach Belichick called, and his number’s on my phone,” Priefer said. “(My wife was) like, ‘Don’t answer it. Don’t answer it. Don’t answer it,’ because she knew exactly what was going to happen, that if he offered me the job, I was going to go.”

Priefer felt he and Belichick — a special teams-minded coach as well — were in alignment with their goals and vision on that side of the ball. The message of toughness resonated with him, as it’s exactly what he’s preached to his special teams units since he began coaching.

Priefer highlighted the importance of special teams for players to find roles before becoming full-time starters. He said there are “66 people” on the special teams depth chart to account for the six phases of special teams — two kickoff units, two punt units and two field goal units. But beyond getting guys on the field, Priefer has spoken with Belichick about how to make UNC effective on special teams.

“Our head coach understands the importance of special teams,” Priefer said. “I’ve worked for head coaches that did not. This gentleman does. He understands the importance of it, and we’ve talked about putting the best players out there.

“Now, do we want to put a starting linebacker in all four core phases? Obviously not,” Priefer said. “The great thing about a college roster is that we dressed 48 players in the NFL. Man, that was a struggle sometimes. But in college football, I don’t know, it could be 78, 80. The depth is a lot better. Does that mean it’s good depth? Not necessarily. So you have to make sure that you put those backups in. Say you have a starting linebacker on your punt team, say he’s gassed in the fourth quarter, it’s hot Week One, you have to make sure that his backup is just as prepared as he is, and that’s my job.”

Under Mack Brown, Larry Porter doubled as the running backs coach and the special teams coach. Porter spent the last four seasons at UNC before Belichick’s arrival.

One of Priefer’s goals is to ensure everyone on the field understands the fundamentals of their special teams roles and all the differences in responsibilities. He said the learning curve for players new to special teams is similar in high school and the NFL, saying that it depends on how much their previous programs emphasized special teams.

“The problem is, some guys think they know more than they really do, coming from college to the NFL,” Priefer said. “And guys coming from high school, sometimes they don’t understand the importance of field position and how it applies to the success of a football team. And, obviously, the kicking game, the role that we play. So at the end of the day, the learning curve, I guess, for young guys that have never done it before, it’s a little bit different than the learning curve in the NFL, but it’s still very similar. So these guys that come from college to the NFL don’t always know how to play and how to do certain techniques, especially the techniques and how we teach them.”

Priefer attended St. Thomas Moore Elementary School, Phillips Middle School and Chapel Hill High School while living in North Carolina. Now that he’s back in the area, he wants to build with UNC’s Super Bowl-winning coach in his first collegiate season.

“I said, ‘This is really the place I want to be,’” Priefer said. “Not just because it was Coach Belichick, but also North Carolina itself. It’s such a special place. So obviously, the combination of Bill Belichick and North Carolina was a great combination I couldn’t pass up.”