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Tom Brady shares his expectations for UNC football under Bill Belichick
"What they're going to get is obviously the most prepared, the most hard-working coach that I'd ever been around."
Count Tom Brady among the many interested to see how Bill Belichick fares in his first season coaching the University of North Carolina football team.
Belichick’s resume as a head coach in the NFL speaks for itself. But, the 73-year-old Belichick is sailing into uncharted waters this season when it comes to his experience in the college ranks.
Belichick first started coaching in football as an assistant with the then-Baltimore Colts in 1975, but he never held a post in college football over his 48 years of coaching experience prior to this year with the Tar Heels.
Even with those potential growing pains, Brady — who won six Super Bowls with Belichick in New England — said on “The Joel Klatt Show” that UNC fans and their players should set high expectations now that Belichick is running the program.
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“What they’re going to get is obviously the most prepared, the most hard-working coach that I’d ever been around,” Brady said. “If you go to that school, you will be prepared to play at the next level. He’s going to teach you the right fundamentals, the right techniques. He’s going to have high expectations for you, and you’re going to develop a lot. That’s what I know.”
Even if Belichick’s meticulous gameplanning and football IQ should bolster a UNC program that went 6-7 last season, Brady said that there still might need to be some adjustments that his former coach will have to make in 2025 and beyond.
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Even though Belichick saw multiple young players thrive during his 24-season run in Foxborough, Brady acknowledged that more patience will have to be preached for Belichick and his staff this season on a UNC roster that will have much less talent than what he is accustomed to work with.
“I think the challenge for him is he’s dealing with a lot of probably underdeveloped players, because he’s dealt with guys that are four, five, six years further along that what he’s normally had to deal with,” Brady said. “So I think there’s probably a learning curve for him.
“And this is me hypothesizing. I don’t have much knowledge of it. But I’m sure it’s different coaching a 17 or 18-year-old than even a 22 or 23-year-old. So they’re just probably less physically developed.”
Brady’s comments fall in line with the concerns shared by former Patriots standout Rob Ninkovich in June, with the two-time Super Bowl champion noting that the talent pool Belichick has to work with this fall is significantly shallower than what he had in the NFL ranks.
As such, the results may not always fall in lockstep with the game planning and prep that Belichick conducts at Chapel Hill.
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“I was surprised that he took that job, I think we were all a little shocked and surprised,” Ninkovich said on the “Dudes on Dudes” podcast with former teammates Julian Edelman and Rob Gronkowski. “I think the challenge will be trying to get the most out of a less talented roster. … The worst team in the NFL is more talented, let’s just face it.
“You could have the (expletive) NFL football team and you have a roster full of studs. So I think it might be a little more difficult to get the most out of some of these kids that, let’s face it, one, two or maybe three are NFL caliber players.”
Even with those hurdles in place for Belichick and a Tar Heels team that didn’t receive a single Top 25 vote in the first Coaches Poll of the season, Brady still believes Belichick has the coaching acumen to right the ship for the UNC program, so long as his players buy in.
“I think what makes Coach Belichick so unbelievable — tactically, he can break down an opponent,” Brady said. “He watches so much film, he is so smart with how he approaches defensive schemes and offensive schemes. And how much can these young kids retain, that may be an interesting challenge as well, because in some ways, they’re not professional.
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“They don’t have as much time as we had as professional athletes to go in there and study film and practice and meet and all that. And they don’t have that amount of time at the college level.”
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