Bill Belichick Q&A: Game Week Preparations for TCU

CHAPEL HILL, N.C. — North Carolina football kicks off the new season in five days. It’s the debut season for coach Bill Belichick at UNC, the longtime NFL coach who now finds himself coaching the college ranks.

The Tar Heels open the highly anticpaited season against TCU on Sept. 1, in a spotlight home contest on Labor Day. The 73-year-old Belichick, who collected eight total Super Bowls across his storied NFL coaching career and ranks second all-time in wins at that level, never has coached college football.

Here are the key points from Belichick’s availability with the media inside the Kenan Football Center on Wednesday …

Opening Statement

“It’s great to be preparing for a game now. Really being a game week, we’re all excited for that. Staff, players, we’ve had a long preseason. And it’s time to focus on the game. It’s upcoming, so I’m looking forward to the preparations on that. TCU is really good program. When coach (Dennis) Franchione came in and then turned over to coach (Gary) Patterson, they really elevated that program with tremendous success like they had had back in the 30s with Davey O’Brien and Sammy Baugh and Dutch Meyer. And then of course, being in the championship game (with) coach (Sonny) Dykes when he took over. It’s really a strong program. It’s had a lot of success in the last two decades, and they’re impressive to watch.

“We saw last year, really an explosive offensive team, a defensive team that’s very tough and aggressive. Some good players on both sides of the ball, and a very competitive kicking game group as well. They can be one of the better special teams units that we’ll see during the year, especially from a coverage standpoint. So got a lot to work on, lot to get ready for, but excited for the process to start and just take it day-by-day here. But definitely looking forward to getting out there on the field and working against ourselves, but really starting to pair work against another opponent, which will be the first major time we’ve really done that this year.”

In the NFL you get to feel out your team with preseason games. What kind of feel do you have for this team, since you don’t get that opportunity in college?

“Well, the opening day is always opening day. I don’t care where it is. And if you look at the NFL in the preseason games, say the average playing time for the veteran players was around 10 percent, so not very many snaps. We’ve said zero snaps. So you know, we’ll see what happens there. But it really for us, it’s just a process. It’s preparation, it’s practice, it’s rest, recovery, and building on yesterday and doing it again. And so that’s where we’re at now. We’re very specifically geared towards TCU, each day is its own, its own day of preparation, and there’s really no looking back. We have things to do in the succeeding days, so we need to make the most out every day, and we’ll see what happens Monday night.”

How do you balance watching film and evaluating yourself, while shifting over to film study of TCU this week?

“It’s pretty much all about preparing for TCU. We spent a lot of time working on what we want to do and building a base for the season. And now we’ll kind of pick and choose the things that we feel like will best be best to use against TCU once we get into the game. I’m sure we’ll find some things that we’ll want to continue to use, other things that will probably say what they’re doing is really not conducive towards this type of strategy. And we’ll move on to something else. That’s kind of what opening day is. Seeing how things match up once you actually get in the game.”

When you watch film on TCU, what stands out about its offense?

“The number of explosive plays they get is impressive. Offensively, they can throw the ball down the field, go routes, post routes, seam (routes), things like that. They also can throw the ball on some intermediate type throws, like slants and quick end cuts, things like that. And then they have plays behind the line of scrimmage, screens and hitches and so forth. They make a lot of yardage with the ball when the receiver gets the ball in their hands. They’re very good after the catch. Now some of those guys are gone, but they also brought in some explosive players that we’ve seen.

“They really make you defend all the blades of grass on the field, the sideline to sideline, the line of scrimmage to 50 yards down the field. So you’ve got a lot to defend, and they do a good job attacking all of it, and where you’re light, that’s where they want to throw and where you’re heavy, they go somewhere else. So they’re a tough offense to match up against. Coach (Kendal) Briles, Coach Dykes, do a good job of putting stress on the defense and this is one of those games where defensively, everybody will have to really do a good job with their responsibility.”

How would you evaluate the process of getting Gio Lopez up to speed since you guys have had him? Do you feel comfortable with him and the whole playbook?

“Well, we don’t really have a whole playbook. We do, but we don’t, because we wouldn’t do everything against everybody. We have certain things that we do against certain teams and the way they play, and maybe not so much on something else. So we would fine tune that based on the game. But, Gio has made a ton of progress. We’ve evaluated things through training camp. And now as we get ready for TCU, he’ll be our starting quarterback. So we’ll give him the majority of reps in practice and make sure that we get him as much preparation as possible. But everybody needs to be ready to go. I feel very comfortable with him and what he’s doing, but he’ll get better as we go forward, because we just will. We have a lot of practices in front of us and a lot of games in front of us, and we’ll all learn a lot from those. So I think he’s ready, but I think he’ll be, like everybody, more ready as we go forward.”