Bill Belichick rode the NFL's 53-man roster to a six-pack of Super Bowl championships atop the New England Patriots. His first North Carolina team? It has more new faces than an entire pro roster.
Appearing Thursday the ACC's annual football media days event in Charlotte, North Carolina, the first-year Tar Heels, first-time college coach spoke about the dramatic roster overhaul in Chapel Hill, where Belichick has brought with him a number of coaches with NFL experience and is leaning on ex-NFL general manager Michael Lombardi to fill the same role at UNC.
Thus, 70 new faces. SEVENTY!
"We brought in a lot of players," Belichick, in the epitome of understatement, told reporters. "We have 70 new players from last year that weren't on the roster last season.
"That's a lot of people and a lot of turnover. It's also been that way with our coaching staff. Some of the players or some of the staff members on the coaching end, and then on the support end in scouting I've worked with in the past, but there are a lot of new people there. So, when you combine all the scouting, support and player transition into the program, it's a lot."
The Tar Heels brought in more than 40 players via the NCAA Transfer Portal and also inked a freshman class that has seen its 29 signees enroll at UNC. Deion Sanders brought in 68 new players to Colorado in 2023 and followed up with an additional 50 newcomers prior to 2024, his second season atop the Buffaloes when they posted a 9-4 mark for their first winning season since 2016.
But that's not all bad, per Belichick. Famously process-oriented, Belichick says his first-ever batch of amateur football players are more receptive to coaching than the superstars he had in the NFL. Though Belichick did make sure to weave a Tom Brady reference into an answer.
"This year, of course, we haven't started training camp yet, but through the course of the spring, the amount of improvement that our players made in those 15 days, most of which were in pads, was something you never saw in the NFL because we never could wear pads in the off-season," said Belichick, who referenced Brad as a lower-round Draft pick who developed but also noted Rob Gronkowski was a higher pick (second round) and still developed his game. "So, how much better the players got and their fundamentals, their footwork, their hand placement, leverage, tackling, so forth, all the physicality things that come with different positions, whether that's press-release, jams, so forth. Their improvement was tremendous.
"So, I'd say on the college end, you're right, the players are a little bit younger and less skilled. Sometimes that's an advantage. There are fewer bad habits to break. But also, I'd say the players are much more receptive to the coaching. They haven't had as long with the way that they were doing it through a college career maybe, and through some pro years where they were starting to develop some habits that they were comfortable with and maybe were a little harder to change. I'd say with our players, they've been very receptive to everything we've asked them to do. They've trained extremely hard, as I said. The personal achievements between their strength, their speed, their explosiveness, all the different body fat percentages, all the different things that we measure is in the high 90 percent range. There's only a couple guys that haven't had the improvement, but really, it's been pretty much the whole team."
The Tar Heels open preseason camp Aug. 1 and face TCU at home on Labor Day night in a primetime game to be televised by ESPN.