Latest news with #Belichick
USA Today
15 hours ago
- Sport
- USA Today
Mike Vrabel proved he's Bill Belichick's successor by sassing a reporter at training camp
Bill Belichick was known for terse exchanges with media and not suffering questions he didn't want to answer in more than two decades as head coach of the New England Patriots. Mike Vrabel played under Belichick for eight seasons before beginning his coaching career. After six seasons and one Associated Press Coach of the Year award with the Tennessee Titans, he's now filling his former coach's role in Foxborough, Massachusetts. So when the opportunity arose to dismiss a repetitive question about how his players looked early in his training camp press conference Tuesday, Vrabel got to show the New England media the scope of what he learned from Belichick. 'Whether you were in a coma when I answered Tom [Curran]'s question, or typing on your phone or tweeting, I don't know," Vrabel told a reporter asking him to go back over the topic he'd opened his press conference addressing. "But I spent 5 minutes answering that question. And I could go back through it, but I'd rather not." It's early in the preseason process and no one is on top of their game just yet. But Vrabel appears to be channeling at least parts of the head coach with more Super Bowl wins than anyone in NFL history. The question now is whether that will manifest in the Patriots playing like their Tom Brady peak or spinning their wheels like the 2022 team that eventually left the future Hall of Fame head coach behind to fill his days recruiting high school kids and fielding questions about a girlfriend five decades younger.
USA Today
19 hours ago
- Sport
- USA Today
Where does USA TODAY Sports project UNC to finish in 2025 college football season?
How will the UNC football program finish in the ACC this fall? The North Carolina Tar Heels made offseason college football headlines in December, hiring Bill Belichick to be their next head football coach. In Week 1 of the 2025 college football season, UNC will again be the focus of national attention, hosting TCU September 1 at 8 p.m. ET on ESPN. There's plenty of expectations for North Carolina this fall, but Belichick's hiring doesn't guarantee immediate success. That's reflected in USA TODAY Sports' preseason predictions for the ACC standings, with the Tar Heels projected to finish 12th amongst 17 teams. UNC is one spot ahead of Boston College, which won a 41-21 matchup between the two programs in November 2024. North Carolina trails Syracuse, which won the 2024 Holiday Bowl and finished ranked for the first time since 2018, by one spot. The Tar Heels' success will depend greatly on their new-look roster, which features a brand-new quarterback in Gio Lopez and an entirely-new defensive line. It can take time for new acquisitions to mesh, but I have a feeling Belichick will get his players focused quickly – if they aren't already. After hosting the Horned Frogs, who appeared in the 2022 National Championship game, the Tar Heels' schedule gets easier with consecutive games against Charlotte and Richmond. UNC then faces a 2-game gauntlet in UCF and Clemson, with a bye week sandwiched in-between, followed by California, Virginia and Syracuse to close out October. Stanford and Wake Forest are beatable opponents to open North Carolina's November slate, then Duke and NC State pose significant challenges. These are simply preseason projections, which are rarely accurate. Good news: the Tar Heels are 0-0, a mindset they'll carry into each week this fall. Follow us @TarHeelsWire on X and like our page on Facebook to follow ongoing coverage of North Carolina Tar Heels news, notes and opinions.
Boston Globe
2 days ago
- Entertainment
- Boston Globe
Bill Belichick's UNC football team reportedly lands docuseries deal after all
However, it was reported shortly after that Belichick and UNC would no longer appear on 'Hard Knocks.' Belichick's girlfriend, Jordon Hudson, 'played an instrumental role' in stopping the potential partnership as she requested to be heavily involved in the project, Get Starting Point A guide through the most important stories of the morning, delivered Monday through Friday. Enter Email Sign Up Belichick, meanwhile, gave a different reasoning for why UNC's deal to appear on 'Hard Knocks' didn't come to fruition. Advertisement 'And the 'Hard Knocks' thing, you know, like, just for the record, 'Hard Knocks' is training camp,' Belichick Advertisement 'There's film issues, too, but forget about the film issues. Like, just say you could straighten all those out. The 'Hard Knocks' just didn't fit for us. That's the bottom line.' Belichick's comments from the 'Pivot Podcast' might be an indication that the Hulu docuseries will focus on UNC's entire season. It wouldn't be the first time that Belichick has allowed camera crews to follow him for an entire year. Belichick granted NFL Films behind-the-scenes access to the Patriots' 2009 season for the inaugural edition of NFL Network's 'A Football Life.' The news of UNC's docuseries deal comes at the end of another week where Belichick made multiple headlines. On Wednesday, Belichick's first season at UNC will officially kick off on Sept. 1, when it hosts TCU. Expectations on how the Tar Heels will do in Belichick's first year seem to be wide-ranging, but DraftKings Sportsbook has placed their win total at 7.5 and is giving them the ninth-best odds to win the ACC (+4000).
Boston Globe
2 days ago
- Sport
- Boston Globe
Bill Belichick's rebuttal to Robert Kraft's ‘risk' comment did him no favors
Kraft, Advertisement Belichick's long retort came off as extremely thin-skinned. The relationship between these two must be worse than ever. Belichick took some undeserved shots from Kraft in Get Starting Point A guide through the most important stories of the morning, delivered Monday through Friday. Enter Email Sign Up But Belichick is the one rewriting history. Belichick says he is the one who 'took a big risk' by taking the Patriots' job? Belichick wasn't exactly in high demand after going 36-44 with the Browns, and he lost out on the Raiders job to Jon Gruden. Kraft, though, did take a risk in trading a first-round pick for a sub-.500 coach with a dull demeanor at the podium. Another questionable claim: Belichick in 2000 took over a Patriots franchise that had 'dismantled' their 1996 Super Bowl team and 'became one of the worst in the AFC'? They went 10-6, 9-7, and 8-8 in three years under Pete Carroll, and only bottomed out at 5-11 after Belichick took over. Belichick in 2000 also inherited several players from the 1996 team, including Drew Bledsoe, Troy Brown, Terry Glenn, Tedy Bruschi, Ty Law, Lawyer Milloy, Willie McGinest, Ted Johnson, and Adam Vinatieri. Advertisement And while Van Natta, not Belichick, wrote that the Patriots ranked 31st out of 32 teams in spending since 1994, that stat has Belichick's fingerprints all over it. It also warrants a fact check since the Panthers and Jaguars didn't exist until 1995, the Ravens until 1996, the Browns didn't play from 1996-98, and the Texans didn't exist until 2002. Unfortunately, accurate cash spending data from the last 30 years is difficult to find. Belichick spent 25 years ignoring the noise, staying above the fray, and cultivating an image as a cunning, unflappable genius. A rapid transformation into the sensitive, media-hungry Belichick in the last six months is a surprising turn that is damaging his legacy. Ben Volin can be reached at
Miami Herald
2 days ago
- Sport
- Miami Herald
ACC Kickoff: Bill Belichick and the top storylines this week in Charlotte
CHARLOTTE -- Talking season in college football continues this week with ACC Kickoff, and anticipation has never been higher because of a certain coach arriving in Chapel Hill. Every head coach and marquee players representing all 17 ACC football programs descend on Charlotte on Tuesday to discuss the upcoming 2025 football season. Here are three storylines to monitor during ACC Kickoff. --Bill Belichick's long-awaited debut The University of North Carolina has historically been a basketball school. But this offseason, the Tar Heels have been the talk of the college football universe since hiring legendary NFL head coach Bill Belichick last December. Belichick, who turned 73 in April, is now a first-time college coach in Chapel Hill after winning six Super Bowls as head coach of the New England Patriots from 2000 through 2023. He replaces Mack Brown, who was fired to end his second stint as UNC head coach last November. It's been an interesting first offseason for Belichick, who has been in the news quite a bit with regard to his 24-year-old girlfriend Jordon Hudson and her involvement with the UNC football program. However, he's also transformed the roster by bringing in 41 transfers, third-most of any Power-Four program. While ACC Kickoff can always be a bit of a media circus, Belichick's first appearance in Charlotte on Thursday should add a new level of buzz before his much-anticipated UNC coaching debut Sept. 1 vs. TCU. --Expectations renewed for Clemson entering 2025 For awhile there, Clemson winning the ACC Championship under Dabo Swinney felt like a bit of a foregorn conclusion. Swinney and the Tigers won six straight conference titles from 2015 through 2020 and a seventh in 2022, along with a pair of national titles in 2016 and 2018. And yet, when Clemson went 9-4 (4-4 in ACC) in 2023, people wondered if the Tigers' run of dominance under Swinney was coming to an end. Clemson quickly proved that doubt foolish last season, capping off a 9-3 regular season with the program's eighth ACC title in the last 10 years and an appearance in the first 12-team edition of the College Football Playoff. The Tigers now enter 2025 with high expectations once again drifting off their 2024 resurgence and the fact that many prominent players from that team return. Senior quarterback Cade Klubnik is back after amassing 3,639 passing yards, 463 rushing yards and 43 total touchdowns (36 passing, seven rushing) in 2024. On the other side of the ball, T.J. Parker Jr. and Peter Woods Jr. are set to anchor a defensive line that is expected to be among the best in the country. --How does SMU follow up its impressive ACC opening act? As conference realignment boomed over the last few years, quite a few teams that changed conferences struggled to adapt to the increased level of competition. That proved to be no problem for SMU, however. The Mustangs finished their first season in the ACC last fall with an 11-1 regular season and made appearances in the ACC Championship Game and College Football Playoff. That makes for a tough act to follow in SMU's second season in the ACC under head coach Rhett Lashlee. Starting quarterback Kevin Jennings is back this season after anchoring the Mustangs' undefeated season behind 3,245 passing yards and 23 touchdown passes. He's likely out for redemption after he threw three interceptions in SMU's 38-10 CFP loss at Penn State. The Mustangs will have to replace leading rushing Brashard Smith (1,332 yards, 14 rushing touchdowns in 2024) and standout defensive linemen Elijah Roberts and Jahfari Harvey, who combined for 15 sacks in 2024. --Field Level Media Field Level Media 2025 - All Rights Reserved
