Bill Belichick Speaks On Ban Of Patriots Scouts From UNC Football Facilities

Bill Belichick appears to be dealing with a severe case of hurt feelings.

The University of North Carolina head football coach was asked after his team’s win over Charlotte about the reports this week that said he has banned Patriots scouts from the UNC football facility.

Belichick confirmed the story by offering some interesting logic.

“Yeah, well no, it’s clear that I’m not welcome around their facility, and so they aren’t welcome at ours,” Belichick said, via Josh Graham’s X account. “It’s pretty simple.”

For as long as he’s been a public figure, Belichick has been a master of the no comment. Even if he was in the center of a national controversy, he’s been a master of avoiding any question he does not care to answer. His most-used refrain in such situations has long been, “I did what I think is best for the football team.”

In this case, though, Belichick was prepared, and his answer matches the tone of the quote given to the Boston Herald this week from an unnamed UNC source.

“Why would we let them in our home after how he’s been treated since he left?” that source told the Herald. “We will help our players, but being treated fairly is a two-way street.”

Belichick — who “mutually parted ways” with the Patriots after the 2023 season, after leading the Patriots to a 28-39 record after letting Tom Brady leave New England — has likely taken issue with Robert Kraft saying in an interview last year that he “fired” Belichick, which went away from the agreed-upon language of the split. It’s also been assumed that Belichick took issue with his depiction in the Apple TV series “The Dynasty,” which was produced during his final year with the team but was released after the end of his tenure. Belichick himself cracked a joke on that matter at Tom Brady’s Netflix roast, and he recently made public statements showing fierce disagreement with a fairly innocuous comment by Kraft, before taking an unprompted shot at both Robert and Jonathan Kraft prior to the start of UNC’s season.

His reasoning on the ban, though, is interesting.

For one, Belichick has been welcomed back to Gillette Stadium in Foxboro, as took the stage to a massive ovation at Brady’s jersey retirement ceremony last summer before delivering a 20-plus-minute speech. (Video of that speech still lives on the Patriots’ official YouTube channel.)

Yet outside of that, Belichick’s messy relationship with Kraft shouldn’t have an impact on the UNC players and their hopes and chances of playing in the NFL. That’s something Belichick promised to do prior to officially accepting the UNC job.

“If I was in a college program, the college program would be a pipeline to the NFL for the players that had the ability to play in the NFL,” Belichick told Pat McAfee last December, days before he was announced as UNC’s head coach. “It would be a professional program. … It would be an NFL program at a college level.”

Belichick even touted his contacts in the NFL — most of which were made during his 24 years with the Patriots — as something he would use to help players make the NFL.

“I feel very confident that I have the contacts in the National Football League to pave the way for those players that would have the ability to have the opportunity to compete in the National Football League,” he said.

Belichick may still be seeking to get players in his program into the NFL, but banning Patriots scouts from seeing his players in person works directly against that purported goal.

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