Belichick, Tar Heels are looking for major improvement for this coming season

CHARLOTTE – Maybe, just maybe, Bill Belichick is embracing how different college football is from the NFL.

Entering his second season as North Carolina head coach during some idle moments during the ACC media gathering on Friday, he stopped and shock hands with various people and even took a selfie with one of the volunteers helping coordinate the three-day event.

The Tar Heels are coming off a 4-8 season overall and were just 2-6 in the ACC, but Belichick says there are a lot of differences to his second team.

"We've had about 90% of our team here since January, so that makes a difference," said Belichick, who won six Super Bowls as a head coach with the New England Patriots.

With Gio Lopez, last year's starting quarterback, transferring to Wake Forest, the starting spot will likely go to either Billy Edwards Jr., a graduate transfer from Wisconsin, or Miles O'Neill, a redshirt sophomore transfer from Texas A&M. Edwards, who is from Lake Braddock, Virginia, started his career at Wake Forest, signing with Coach Dave Clawson but did not see the field in 2021.

Since then, the 23-year-old Edwards was at Maryland for three seasons and then played just two games at Wisconsin last season.

"This year, our quarterbacks after spring ball are still here, are out in player-run practices, which our players were never really able to do the last year because we didn't have enough experience on either side of the ball," Belichick said.

Bobby Petrino, a former head coach at Louisville and who has been in the NFL, was hired in the offseason to be the offensive coordinator. The Tar Heels averaged just 19.2 points per game last season.

"It's been great having Bobby," Belichick said. "I've known him for a long time from the pro to college side but also when he was in Atlanta. A lot of things he does offensively are similar to what we did in New England. We've kind of been able to merge those together - protections, routes, play actions, balanced attack, things like that."

Wide receiver Jordan Shipp didn't mind sharing what last season was like.

"In terms of frustrations, nobody likes to lose," said Shipp, who led the team in catches last season. "I wasn't the only one frustrated. Everybody was frustrated, but we understood that those frustrations needed to be pointed in the right direction. Us sitting in the locker room pointing fingers, that's not going to help us go anywhere."

Shipp said he likes the direction of where the team is going.

"There are some things we did good last year, but we're not trying to hone on that," he said. "We want to flush it all. It's a new start. We're worried about what can we do to be better this year. What can we do to win the day-to-day?"

In the transfer portal era, each team goes through changes and Belichick said he has about 60 new players and his freshmen recruiting class was ranked 14th in the country.

"I'm excited to see how that comes along," Belichick said. "It was a big freshman class because we kind of didn't have much of a freshman class in that (2025) group. So, we kind of combined those two and brought in a lot of young players that are going to be good, but it's going to take a little bit of time. They're certainly working hard. If they can follow the lead of the (older) guys we have, they'll do well."

One of the wrinkles to the Tar Heels season is their opener in Ireland against TCU on Aug. 29.

It's a unique experience to play overseas.

"We are looking forward to opening the season in Ireland," Belichick said. "That will be a great trip. Some of our players went over there to kind of preview, promote the game. It will be exciting to go over there. I've been involved in some of those international games myself from my time in the NFL. Those are experiences that you remember."

Belichick did his best to answer what he learned from last season and being a college head coach for the first time.

"I mean, look, we learn every day," he said. "I learn every day. I learned from last year, the year before that, and all the years from before that. But right now, we're focusing on going forward, what we can accomplish today, this week, and in this training period. Then we'll move on to our next set of goals.

"You take what you have learned from the past and try to improve on it."

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