What Is Bill Belichick’s Definition of a Tar Heel?

For more on Coach Belichick's response, here's the transcript to follow along with, per TheACC:

"Developing players, that's really what coaching is, and that's what we do. We take great pride in that, myself and our staff, and players who want to be developed. A Carolina player is a player who wants to be a good football player, who wants to work hard, to wants to make a commitment towards improving on a regular basis, towards training and team execution on the field. So when we get those players, we see a lot of improvement, a lot of development.

And that's going back, whether it was at Cleveland, where Mike and I put together an offensive line where four of the five starters were free agents, or at New England where we had a number of low draft choices or high draft choices, I should say. I'd say Brady and Edelman, players like that, who turned out to be great players, as well as some of the other players are higher picks that developed like Gronkowski and so forth.

Development is a big part for us, and players that want to come in, work hard, be good players, learn, compete. Competition is what makes us all better. Again, the best competition for me, I learned the most from going against great offensive coaches like Andy Reid and Kyle Shanahan, Mike Shanahan, Joe Gibbs, and all those guys that I competed against. That's what made me great as a coach, or made me work the hardest as a coach, was to compete against those people.

Same thing for the players. Internal competition, the competition we have daily on the field will get us most ready for the competition that we'll face on Saturdays or whenever the games are."

Thaddeus Dixon, Jordan Shipp, Will Hardy, and Gio Lopez are in for a ride learning from who many believe to be the best football coach ever (his eight Super Bowl rings are there to show for it). Coach Belichick's experience working with Tom Brady, Rob Gronkowski, plus more have prepared him to teach younger players varying from 18-22 (some older during today's landscape of college football).

Player development is crucial to team success, and especially longevity in how consistent a team can be from year to year. We will see what the 73-year-old can do in that regard at this level.

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