Bill Belichick’s first year as the North Carolina Tar Heels head coach has had its share of growing pains. But for Belichick, one of the biggest lessons may have been off the field.
Belichick shared that the most notable difference for him between coaching college football and in the NFL has been dealing with the transfer portal vs. free agency. The 73-year-old cited that in the pros, teams can plan in advance who they want to target or keep out of a pool of upcoming available players, but in college, anyone is fair game at any time.
“Once you cut it down, maybe there’s your 75 out of the 400 [free agents] that you’re actually interested in. I mean, here, you have 100 players on every team times however many teams,” Belichick said Tuesday. “I mean, there’s literally thousands of players that could potentially enter the portal or not. So, that’s a little bit different. And your team, everybody is a free agent, or they’re not.”
Unlike his days with the Patriots, Belichick is now understanding more and more that he has less control over his roster given the lack of contract rights and the ability to lock players in for next year or multiple years, i.e. player options.
Prior to this season, UNC lost 23 players through the portal and welcomed 21 players, though the results haven’t been the best in between the lines. Belichick’s Tar Heels, at 3-5, are near the bottom of the ACC entering Week 11, with a 1-3 record in conference play that has them 14th.
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