UNC football head coach Bill Belichick spoke with the media Tuesday morning at the Kenan Football Center. Now in his sixth month on the job, Belichick addressed his team’s improvement during spring practice, the House v. NCAA settlement, new additions along the roster and more.
Read through Belichick’s full comments, which have been lightly edited for clarity, below:
Belichick: It’s been a really exciting time here on campus over the last few weeks. We had the [NCAA baseball] Super Regionals. We’ve had camps. We’ve had over a thousand kids here at camp, and we’ve got several more coming up in the coming weeks. A lot of official visits in. Our players are working out as well. Big soccer match here tonight. A lot of activity on campus. It’s been an exciting place to be. Looking forward to the next couple weeks here, especially as we move forward on the football end of it.
There are a lot of new faces since the end of last season. It’s been a lot of turnover. Almost two-thirds of the roster from where it was in January, after those players whose eligibility expired, or like Omarion [Hampton] who went into the draft, when those guys left. But it’s definitely coming together and the training’s been good. We’ve made a lot of improvement. Good team chemistry. A lot of individual improvement, and obviously we’ve got a long way to go, but we’re working hard. We’re making progress, and so we’re excited about that. Looking forward to rounding out the summer training time and then when camp starts in August, obviously that’ll be a big month for us too. But I just want to connect with everybody here before we, we roll into the summer and give everybody a chance to catch up on UNC football.
Question: How close is quarterback Max Johnson to being fully healthy? Do you anticipate he’ll be 100 percent by the time you begin camp in August?
Belichick: Max is doing very well. His rehab, it’s been long. I have a lot of admiration for him. It was a tough injury, but nobody’s worked harder than he has and he certainly is able to do a lot more than he was this past spring. So we’ll see exactly where he is when things start, but it’s a whole lot closer and we certainly expect to see him out there. It’s been very encouraging.
Question: What did you guys like in [quarterback] Gio Lopez?
Belichick: He was really productive at South Alabama. He was a dual threat quarterback. He’s had plenty of production, both running game and passing game experience. Tough kid. Played well against good competition, teams like LSU. He looks like he’s definitely ready for this level. And we’re excited to work with him, as we are with everybody else. We’ve got some freshmen, we’ve got Max and Gio [in the quarterback room], so we’ll see how it all plays out. Honestly, none of them, with the exception of Max for a handful of plays last year, none of them have really taken any snaps here. So it’ll be good to see how all that plays out.
Gio Lopez is one of a number of quarterbacks who will compete for UNC’s starting job this fall. (Image via South Alabama Athletics)
Question: What do you like about how you guys built out this roster over the last few months?
Belichick: I think [general manager] Mike Lombardi and the scouting staff have done a great job. We came in late and so that was a little bit of a challenge on the recruiting end, because it was after signing day. We were active in the portal, but kind of late on that too. But with that being said, I thought we still were able to improve the roster, and then we’ve had additions of some players this spring who I think will be a factor.
The 2026 recruiting classes have gotten off to a good start. We have a long way to go on that. But we’ve seen a lot of good players and there’s a lot of interest from those kids in coming here. We have some commits, but those commits don’t really count until signing day. But still, I think that’s a sign that we’re on the right track, from the quarterback position to the skill positions, the offensive line and, and a lot of defensive front seven players and some players in the secondary, as well as a placekicker. We’re off to a good start. I’ll see how it goes.
Question: You haven’t seen your team in a game yet, but after spring ball, what do you feel like are the strengths of your team?
Belichick: That’s a good question. I think we’re just gonna have to evaluate that as we go. We’ll have a lot better idea in training camp. There were several players that left the team after spring ball. And then we have a lot of new faces, both incoming freshmen and players who came from transfers. So we’ll just have to see how all that plays out. It’ll be interesting to see how it all comes together. We’ve got a lot of work to do, but it’s certainly trending in the right direction. We’ve had good leadership from some of the guys that have come in here. Those guys have done a great job of setting the pace, encouraging the guys to come along and put in the work. And we’ve had really good results from our physical training and the team building as well. A long way to go, but I feel like we’re on the right track.
Question: How did spring practice shape your impressions of this team, since you hadn’t coached any of these guys before? And how did spring practice influence what you felt like needed to be done with the roster going into the next portal cycle?
Belichick: These are great kids to work with. They really are. We’ve had great buy-in. There have been really no problems at all. These guys are on time, they’re early, they work hard. They put in the work in the weight room, out on the field. They spend time on their own, whether it’s doing extra training or coming over and watching film and that type of thing. They’ve made a ton of improvement. These guys are a lot better than they were when we started in January, on every level. It’s exciting to see where that’s gonna take us. Maybe we’re close to the peak or maybe we’re only a quarter of the way up the hill. I don’t know, but we’ll see.
The improvement’s been very good. I don’t want to speak for them, but I would say that based on the improvement that we made during that timeframe, that’s generated some momentum. If we keep working like this, we’re gonna continue to get better. And these guys have dreams and aspirations beyond North Carolina. And I think that’s realistic for a lot of players. They’re working really hard to not only get the most out of their themselves individually, but they’re great teammates. And so that’s where we’re trending.
Question: Can you talk about building the roster? What have been the biggest challenges of navigating the transfer portal?
Belichick: Well, it’s an area that Mike and I have been very familiar with. We spent a lot of time in the free agency space over the course of our careers in the NFL. I’d say the biggest difference in college is just the volume. There are just so many players. The college portal is in the thousands, and then you’re looking at a 2026 recruiting class, and then a 2027 recruiting class that we’re starting to build relationships with, and even some in 2028. The volume of players between a recruiting class of several thousand kids, a portal class of a similar number, and then another class, it’s just a lot of names. It’s a lot of names to keep track of, and it’s not just the players. You have families and coaches and agents and people like that. So in a lot of cases, you’re looking at four, five, six, seven people that are connected with that player in addition to actually recruiting him. You’re kind of recruiting a family. The volume of people is a little bit more than what we’ve had, but we’re adjusting to it. And we have a great staff. Our scouts and staff have done a really good job of sorting those things out and putting us in in position to be competitive in terms of making sure that those players understand what we have to offer.
What we’re selling is to be a pro on the field, to be a pro off the field in terms of life learning. And of course, the academics here are outstanding. We’ll get players ready to go to the next level, whether that’s training, scheme, fundamentals, preparation, film, situational football, all those things. That’s what we do. And that’s what we’re selling. Most kids are interested in that. They really are. So we’ve had great buy-in.
North Carolina general manager Michael Lombardi speaks with reporters during an NCAA college football news conference, Tuesday, Feb. 11, 2025, in Chapel Hill, N.C., about two months after the hiring of football coach Bill Belichick, (AP Photo/Aaron Beard)
Question: What did you like about [defensive back transfer] Thad Dixon, and some of the things that he was doing? What do you identify as some of the strengths of his game?
Belichick: I like a lot of what Thad did. Let’s start with just the person: great leadership, first one on the field, works hard, very good in preparation. I had some individual meetings with him and got to spend some quality time with him. He’s been great with our recruits. Probably one of the best that we have in terms of helping the kids that we recruit come in here and understand what the program’s about and how it can be beneficial to them. He’s got good skills. Probably could play any position in the secondary. We’ll see how all that goes. He’s got a great skill set, a good work ethic, and he had an excellent spring. I’m excited to see it come together for him in the fall.
Question: There’s been so much interest since you got hired: you as a coach and also your personal life. What do you think is the biggest misconception about you in your time here at Carolina so far?
Belichick: I don’t know. Look, I’m really focused on doing my job here at Carolina, which is to help our football team and just to get better every day, to stack those days together, training days, preparation days, days out on the field. And we’ve done that. Our staff has done a great job of working hard to do that. That’s my big focus. Is there noise out there? We’ve always dealt with that. Our job is to build the football team and also build their individual careers. That’s really where we’re at. Thanks,
Question: If you knew there would be this much interest in your personal life, would you come back to coaching? Or has that taken away from the experience of you coming back to coaching? And then, totally unrelated, on the House settlement with roster limits and everything you’ve had to deal with, how have you had to make decisions based on that?
Belichick: Well, again, on some of the noise out there, it is what it is. That’s a personal venture that I entered into when I wasn’t in coaching last year. Hopefully that’ll be a big purchase on Father’s Day.
But in any case, the House settlement is something that we’ve all been waiting for. And now that that’s been handed down, it’s quite lengthy and technical. We have people on our staff and lawyers that are looking at it so we can have a full understanding of exactly what we’re doing. We did that over the weekend. Michael Lombardi and I will be meeting with those people that are advising us on what exactly it means, what we can do, how we need to configure things a little bit differently than maybe we’ve done in the past couple months.
Again, a lot of this was anticipated, but now that it’s more formalized, we’ll have to make sure that we’re compliant with every part of it, from roster size to payments and fair market value or reasonable market value. The Deloitte part of it. There’s a number of things that are interconnected. We just want to make sure that we understand everything before we march too far forward. But I’m glad that it’s out. I’m glad that we have rules and policies that we can work with. Now it’s just understanding exactly how the mechanics of some of those will work, and what we can do and what we can’t do. As we identify that and as it becomes clearer, that’ll help us going forward. I would expect that over the next year there’ll be a lot of things that’ll come up a year from now. Some modifications will be made. Who knows what they are, but I think that as you get all these schools, all these student-athletes and so many different NIL deals, we’ll see how all that plays out and what the boundaries are or aren’t going forward
Question: You’re bringing in a lot of talent and a lot of experience on the offensive line through the portal, in addition to returning three starters. How do you juggle all of that experience when there are only five starting spots?
Belichick: In my experience in the NFL, it’s really hard to go through a season with the same five offensive linemen for the entire year. I won’t say never happens, but it’s unusual for that to happen. Many teams lose multiple players at the same position for a game or two or a period of time. So depth is important at every position. You just never know when you’re gonna need it, right? And it’s good competition, and competition will bring out the best in everybody. We have a very competitive group. Those guys embrace competition, and it makes all of us better.
I know for me, coaching against guys like Andy Reid and Kyle Shanahan, Sean McVay, Sean Peyton, guys like that, that’s what made me better. It was really hard to coach against those guys. That’s what sharpens your game. And I think as a student-athlete, good competition both on your side of the ball and on the other side of the ball is important. But to your point on the amount of veteran players we have, the competition will be great. I think their experience will be very helpful. I think another thing that’s also very important that Mike and I have talked about is the 2026 class. We need to be ready to have some players in there for the guys that won’t be returning next year. So there’s some real team building that we need to address in the future. But for right now, we’ll let the competition play out. I think it’s very good, very healthy. It’s a lot more than what we had back in the spring. The best players will play. That’s the only thing I could tell you.
Christo Kelly from Holy Cross is one of a number of experienced offensive lineman joining UNC for the 2025 season. (Image via Holy Cross Athletics)
Question: Given the focus on your personal life, how do you keep your players from getting distracted? And do you expect your girlfriend to be on the sidelines during games going forward?
Belichick: No, she doesn’t have any role in the UNC football program. There’s been noise out there about a lot of different things. Our focus is getting better, stacking good days together, having good rest, recovery and training moving forward the next day. And for the coaching staff, to focus on how do we help our team get better? That’s my job and that’s our staff’s job: to put a good plan in place so that they can see the improvement. That’s what our job is.
Question: Do you have an early idea of what your team’s offensive philosophy will be, and how does that change with multiple options at quarterback?
Belichick: We have really five players at quarterback, including the two freshmen who are coming in. Bryce [Baker] is the only one that was here in the spring. Max was here, but wasn’t able to participate much. And of course, Gio’s new. So I think as we see the offense evolve, some of it will be reflective of how those quarterbacks do and how that position shapes up. I think we have good competition there. And our offense is our offense, and we’ll be able to adapt to whoever it is. We’ve certainly had a lot of quarterbacks through the years with different skill sets and we were able to work with all of them. But we’ll see how it all plays out. Right now, that position is one that we just don’t have a lot of on-field experience with. Even though Max was here, he just wasn’t able to participate in any of the team drills. Um, so, you know, it kind of also includes him, even though he is a very experienced player.
Question: You spoke on earlier the improvements that your team has made so far in the spring. What were some of those areas where you could see your team getting better, and how close are you guys to where you want to be?
Belichick: We’re always working to continue to improve. As we hit our targets, then we just keep raising the bar on those targets and see where it goes. I think the improvement was across the board. Better communication, better fundamentals, better understanding of what we’re trying to do. Certainly the conditioning was much better. We practiced at a very high level, similar to what we have done in the past with Moses Cabrera, our strength coach. [Cabrera was formerly on Belichick’s staff with the New England Patriots]. And the players were able to respond to that and maintain not only good health, but a high-quality performance. We didn’t run out of gas. We were able to sustain the workload of those practices from our offseason training. It started back in January.
All of those were great signs of growth. How far can we go? How much can we improve and how will it all come together collectively? We’ll just have to see, but we’re not gonna stop. We don’t think we’re there yet. We’re definitely not there. We know we’ve got a long way to go, but I think these guys have a really good future in front of them, individually and collectively, and it’s exciting to see the progress they’ve made. I’m looking forward to working with them every day. It’s really a great group to work with and a great opportunity for me and our staff to see the satisfaction and the growth that they’ve had individually and collectively as a group. And we have some new players coming in and it’s exciting to work with them. We’ll see how all that’ll works out, too.
Featured image via Associated Press/Chris Seward
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