Bill Belichick Q&A: 'Some Familiar Faces This Week'

CHAPEL HILL, N.C. — North Carolina secured its first power-conference and ACC win of the Bill Belichick era, knocking off Syracuse 27-10 on the road Friday night.

Carolina (3-5, 1-3 ACC) returns home this weekend to host Stanford (3-6, 2-4 ACC) on Saturday at Kenan Stadium. The Cardinal is under the direction of interim coach Frank Reich, the former head coach of the Indianapolis Colts and Carolina Panthers. This is Stanford’s first season with legendary quarterback Andrew Luck serving as the program’s general manager.

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

Opening Statement

“It’s some familiar faces this week, with Frank (Reich) and Andrew Luck. Those guys were hard to compete against at a different point in time. Have some memories, some real battles with that, with the Colts and when Frank was in Philly and so many other places. But anyway it’s been interesting watching Stanford this year. Big win against Florida State. Good come-from-behind win against San Jose State. … An interesting team, looks like they’ve made a change at quarterback with Elijah Brown. He played the fourth quarter against Pittsburgh and did some good things in that game. I guess enough for them to make the change. Got a couple good running backs, a couple good receivers and a young offensive line.” 

“That defensive staff, they play very fundamentally sound up front. They’re pretty good defensive lineman, and all are aggressive. They play hard and have a couple of good specialists again, which we’ve seen in the last few weeks, punter and kicker. So a good field position team that can change field position with the kicking game, which we’ve seen from Cal and Virginia the last couple weeks as well. So a new challenge for us here, we’ll get to work. Obviously, we don’t have a lot of film on Brown to watch, but we have some.”

When Austin Blaske came here, he said he wanted to play center and go to the NFL. Early this season things changed and he played tackle. How do you view him as a center moving forward?

“He’s shown position versatility all the way through. Which going to the next level, that’s a huge advantage. NFL teams can only take eight players to the game, so you don’t have a backup at every position. Somebody has to play more than one spot, whether that’s a starter who moves or a backup who moves, however you do it. 

“The versatility of an offensive lineman is a huge advantage in the National Football League. So I think that’s really something that Austin has benefited from. He’s had an opportunity to play all three spots along the line. I think center is a good position for him, but he’s been able to play all three so we’re fortunate to have him. And not only has he played well, but he’s given us a lot of leadership. Unfortunately, he missed the majority of training camp in the first three weeks of the season, came back in a Clemson game with really not too much practice. He’s just gotten better and better each week. So I think his best football this year is still ahead of him, and excited to see that.

Could Thaddeus Dixon be getting closer to getting back on the field?

“He’s definitely getting closer. He’s more active than he’s been. Again, that’ll come from clearance with the doctor. It’s an internal thing that needs to be inside the body, meaning it needs to be cleared by the doctor. So when that happens, we’ll go from there. But until that happens then he wouldn’t be able to play.”

So he hasn’t practiced yet, correct?

“Yeah, exactly right.”

When you look at Melkart Abou-Jaoude and his recent productivity, what are some things from a fundamental standpoint that he’s doing better now as compared to earlier this season?

“Nobody works harder than Melkart. He’s a very good worker in every phase of the game. The training this offseason training, or in season training, lifting, conditioning, all those things. He takes care of himself in the training room, film, practice, and then applying it in games. He is on a good upward trend that he’s been on since he’s been here. And each day, he just gets a little better and does something today or that he didn’t do yesterday or week ago or two weeks ago. Whether that’s in the running game, the passing game, on special teams or something in conjunction with another player, like pass rush games and things like that, he just continues to improve and work hard. He’s one of our hardest workers, and it certainly has paid off for him in his production and performance. So he’s a real grinder, and he’s been great for our program.”

With this matchup being between two former NFL coaches, what’s the biggest learning curve you had this season between coaching professionals versus college players?

“I think the coaching is about the same, honestly. As I’ve said before, the biggest difference has been the volume of players that are potentially on your team. The number of potential recruits, the number of potential portal players, whether you’re in that process or whether you’re where we are right now, kind of on the edge of it. But obviously you’re always heading into it or coming out of it, one or the other. So just kind of working through that, just the number of players is a lot in the NFL, the players who were free agents were the players whose contract expired. So you look at the contract to see his contract expired, and there’s your 400 guys, or once you cut it down, maybe there’s your 75 guys out of the 400 that you’re actually interested in. 

“Here you’ve got 100 players on every team times however many teams. There’s literally 1000s of players that could potentially enter the portal or not. So that’s a little bit different. And your team, everybody’s a free agent, and that’s different than in the NFL, when you add players under contract, or you have rights to players for upcoming year or years. This is just a lot different than that. 

“And I’d say in the NFL, you feel like you had a set of rules that was pretty clearly defined. Now they change when the CBA changed every call it 10 years, but the rules were clearly defined here. (In college) there’s the House legislation, there’s the NCAA, they kind of run together and they don’t. It’s a little harder to decipher exactly what can and can’t be done. And NIL, and so forth. .. Mike handles most of that, but it’s just less clear on how a lot of those processes will work. I think right now it’s fine, but how will they work going forward with the recruiting class, with NIL. The guys who are actually in college, and they’re let’s call it contracts or arrangements, it’s just this. There’s a lot of clarity that still needs to occur. And talking to other coaches in college football and other administrators, I think that’s a pretty common viewpoint.”

There’s still four weeks left in the regular season, but has the front office begun the process of getting a sense of who might be getting in the portal from other teams? Have you started those conversations with your own team?

“Michael and his staff are working on all the personnel matters, whether it’s graduate transfers, whether it’s potential portal players, or whether it’s high school recruits. Which again, that’s a moving target as high school players reclassify one way or another. So that’s another process. We’re focused on the game and winning games. That’s what we’re focused on. But certainly there’s another aspect of our program, on the personnel side, that’s working on personnel matters.”