Tar Heels LB Coach Get Real on Coaching with Belichick

Q: How concerned are you about the offense and how has playcalling reflected that?

Yeah, I just think we need to do a better job all the way across the board, in each and every area, offense, defense, special teams. There's a lot of room for improvement and just our fundamentals, our execution, some cases, our timing. You know, we'll just keep working on that, and think it's definitely getting better, but we're certainly a long way from where we need to be. 

Offensively when you have one negative play, it's tough to get 10 yards in three downs. It's tough to get it in two or sometimes one. So avoiding those negative plays and staying out of long yardage and then converting the ones that we need to convert. All those need to be better. No doubt"

Q: Where do you see the running back room right now, and how much evaluating is there still to do?

Belichick: "Yeah, well, it's a really competitive situation. And, you know, last year, none of those guys got a whole lot of carries. You know, when you have Hampton, you feed him, and they did that, and that was obviously the right thing to do. So, you know, it's hard to evaluate backs until they get an opportunity to run against real competition and break tackles and can use their run skills. What it looks like in practice is not always the same as in the game when there's live tackling. So we've got a feel for how that's going, but it's very competitive. I have confidence in all of them. They all have shown a lot of good things, and that's why they've gotten playing time. We'll see how it works itself out."

Q: How do you and your staff evaluate success against TCU versus success against Charlotte when determining who should get more reps and who should play more?

Well, again, we can't really control who's on the other side of the ball and whoever's there is there. We can't do anything about that. I think the big thing we look for is just the execution that our players are doing. Are they running the route at the right depth? Are they using the proper technique to get open? Are they blocking with proper leverage and hand placement and so forth? Are they, you know, defeating blocks or covering receivers the way they need to? 

It could look okay in a certain situation, but it's really not, because it's not being done fundamentally, properly, and eventually that's going to get exposed. So we're just really working hard to get better every day at everything we do, and there's certainly been a lot of improvement, but we're not where we need to be, and consistency is a big part of it, and so we'll continue to grind away and work on that. It's no real shortcut to it. 

Sure, competition is definitely a factor, but we can only control what we can control. But I think we're doing things right, then we'll be able to compete against good competition. If we don't do them right, then it doesn't really matter, probably much of who we're against, we're gonna have some problems.

To