North Carolina's Bill Belichick isn't worried about the venue for his first CFB away game

You don't often see a Power Conference team head on the road to take on a team from a "lesser" conference, but perhaps the North Carolina Tar Heels should be thanking their lucky stars that the Charlotte 49ers are next up on their schedule.

After a 48-14 drubbing at the hands of TCU in Week 1 in front of what started off as a rowdy home crowd, Bill Belichick's team could use a bounce-back game. Belichick is going from coaching in the NFL to a Week 2 college football clash at Charlotte's Jerry Richardson Stadium, which holds just over 15,000 people. For comparison's sake, Gillette Stadium, home of the New England Patriots, holds approximately 65,000 people.

Belichick isn't sweating the small stuff, or the small venue, though. The Tar Heels have other things to worry about. 

Bill Belichick explains North Carolina can only control so much

“Well during the COVID year, we played in front of a couple hundred people in bigger stadiums,” Belichick said on Wednesday when asked about Charlotte's relatively small venue compared to his past experiences, according to Daniel Hager of On3. “You know again, we can control what we can control. We control how we prepare and how we play. However many people are or aren’t there or whatever the weather is and all those things we have no control over. We can just control our preparation, our performance, our attitude and how competitive we play. That’s what we’re gonna focus on.”

Belichick is famous for the catchphrase "do your job." His football players must do what they're instructed, get granular about they do on the field and take accountability. Just do your job on each play.

It's a mantra that worked great for years in New England, and Belichick has the Super Bowl rings to prove it. Now, he has to try to get his UNC team focused for this game as the Tar Heels are still reeling from the season-opening loss.

A huge part of that is preparation, and Belichick wants his team to have the mindset that it doesn't matter where the game is played — they're just going to come out and do their jobs.

"We honestly take the approach of we’ll play anywhere anytime. Day or night. Home, away, in a parking lot. In Ireland. In North Carolina. In California. Wherever it is. We gotta be ready to play when the games are scheduled, and we can control what we can control," Belichick said.