We're one week away from watching eventual Pro Football Hall of Fame head coach Bill Belichick get his first opportunity to lead a college football team. The North Carolina Tar Heels are taking a gamble on the eight-time Super Bowl champion and are hoping he can bring a more professional feel to the program after the decline of the Mack Brown era.
Of course, the definition of "professional" depends on who you ask. In Belichick's eyes, that means free reign to direct his vision for the team without too much interference from the powers above.
"There's no owner, there's no owner's son, there's no cap, everything that goes with the marketing and everything else, which I'm all for that," Belichick told the Boston Globe of the way college football teams are run. "But it's way less of what it was at [the NFL] level. Generic NFL teams, you have the owner, president, general manager, personnel director, college director, pro director, cap guy, some other consultant, then head coach. I'd say when we had our best years in New England, we had fewer people and more of a direct vision. And as that expanded, it became harder to be successful."
There's no other way to read that than as a shot at New England Patriots owner Robert Kraft and his son Jonathan. Belichick spent 24 seasons in Foxboro, Mass., but his latter years certainly appeared strained between his relationship with quarterback Tom Brady and the more involved his bosses got in the day-to-day operations of the team. It seems like the legendary head coach still has a pretty sizable chip on his shoulder about how things ended in New England (and who got left with the blame), but his current team probably doesn't love hearing this kind of talk on the eve of Week 1.
Bill Belichick still hasn't accepted responsibility for his demise in New England
If anything, Belichick's comments reveal he still hasn't accepted the fact that he shared a large portion of the blame in why he flamed out in New England. His teams missed the playoffs in three of the final five seasons he was in charge and they haven't won a playoff game since winning Super Bowl LIII.
Losing Brady to the Tampa Bay Buccaneers was also a major factor in the lack of success that Belichick saw. It reignited the debate over whether the six Super Bowl titles the duo won was actually more a result of Brady's talent than Belichick's coaching genius.
North Carolina fans should be wary of Belichick's seemingly unchanged attitude towards his former employer. For all they know, he could easily point the finger elsewhere if the Tar Heels don't find success right away. This sure seems like someone who strong-armed his way into a job after failing to gain traction with another NFL team and is more focused on proving his old bosses wrong than building something sustainable at UNC.
The school opens its season on Sept. 1 at home against TCU, which will be a crucial first test of whether Belichick's recruiting and coaching style has actually taken root in Chapel Hill.