Bill Belichick Q&A: 'Looking Forward to This Rivalry'

CHAPEL HILL, N.C. — North Carolina (4-7, 2-5 ACC) wraps up the season at NC State (6-5, 3-4 ACC) on Saturday night. The Wolfpack has won four straight over the Tar Heels, including seven of the last nine rivalry contests. Carolina hasn’t won on the road at Carter-Finley Stadium since 2019. 

Here are the key points and full video from coach Bill Belichick’s weekly availability with the media on Tuesday inside the Kenan Football Center …

Opening Statement

“Happy Thanksgiving to everyone and all of our viewers and listeners out there. A lot to be thankful for. It’s always a time of year where you think about all the all the fortunate things that you have and people that you’re with that you appreciate, and so forth. 

“Looking forward to this rivalry, NC State. I know this is a super competitive environment and game, and I look forward to it. Again, similar to what we saw last week, but on their turf, and that’ll be a, like I said, very highly competitive atmosphere. No doubt about that. Last regular season game, so will be a lot of energy there. I’ve known Coach Doeren for quite a while. One of his best friends was a coach who worked with me, Bret Bielema, and always had a ton of respect for what Dave has done there. He always has a tough, highly competitive team. Those guys play with really good fundamentals and good energy. And so I always like to watch his teams play and I know that they’re very well coached, they’re disciplined and they’re absolutely tough. You see that on film.  

“Defensively it’s a disruptive group, and this is probably the strongest, most physical group that we’ve seen. But these guys, it’s hard to move them and they do a good job rushing, attacking the pocket. Maybe not a lot of high sack production, but they’re disruptive with their power and their line strength. So good all around team. Well balanced team. Well coached.”

Jordan Shipp said after last week’s game that he expects this game to be chippy. How do you as a coach try to contain those moments from hurting your team?

“Well, we need to do a much better job of that, too many personal foul penalties. That really cost us in the (Duke) game. So we’ve talked about it all year. We’ve addressed it, and we expect those to be called, because that’s the way that they have called them all season. Really the ACC officials have been pretty consistent on that. We just have to do a better job of keeping our boys playing football and not doing things after the play.”

What have you learned about the NC State rivalry and Dave Doeren since being here?

“They’re a hard working group of guys. I think if you’ve been through the program with him you know how to work. You’re tough, physically and mentally tough. And again, he runs a good program. You earn what you get there. Those guys play hard. You see it on film, every play is not perfect, but they’re playing hard through the down, regardless of the position. … It’s every play, you can’t afford any plays off against this group, or they’re going to get you on it, because they just keep coming at you. So Dave’s had a lot of good players down there, and certainly a lot of good linemen, physical guys. Tough, physical players.”

Recent news came out that Jordon Hudson plans to sue Pablo Torre. How do you keep that outside noise from being a distraction?

“Yeah, focused on the game. That’s (what) our team is focused on.”

Gio Lopez probably played one of his best games of the year against Duke. What did you see from him, especially in the third quarter? Did you try to simplify things for him?

“Yeah, I don’t know if I would use that word. I’d say it’s overall just execution, and that’s everybody that’s involved. It’s not just the quarterback. It’s the receivers, the line and the timing of the plays and so forth. So I think our execution has improved over the course of the year. Hopefully it continues to improve. And I think that’s helped our production offensively. I mean, there are a lot of opportunities that we had at other points during the season that we just were just a little bit off. 

“And that’s enough to have a missed opportunity versus being able to capitalize on some of those opportunities, and it’s only a few inches sometimes, or a split second, but that makes all the difference. So we’ll just keep working to get better, and hopefully our execution will continue to get better. I don’t think it’s been any one magical thing or plays are different. Defenses are different, the matchups are different, but just a little higher level of execution confidence, and not just with him, but with all his teammates, everybody being this little more precise in their assignments and their jobs.”