On Saturday, Bill Belichick steered the North Carolina Tar Heels to their first win of the season, easing the rocky start of his tenure at UNC. The Tar Heels cruised to a 20-3 victory over Charlotte, marking a promising start under the new coach.
But as is often the case with Belichick, the story off the field attracted just as much attention as the result on it. This time, all eyes were on his reported decision to bar New England Patriots scouts from attending Tar Heels practices.
After the game, Belichick addressed the move directly, offering a blunt explanation when asked why his former team wasn’t allowed access.
“It’s clear that I’m not welcome around their facility, so [they’re] not welcome at ours. Pretty simple,” Belichick said, according to multiple reporters.
Belichick, who spent 24 seasons as head coach of the New England Patriots before being let go after the 2023 season, hasn’t entirely smoothed things over with the franchise or owner Robert Kraft. While Kraft initially described their parting as “amicable,” Belichick has appeared to take subtle—and sometimes not-so-subtle—jabs at his former team in the year and a half since leaving.
That tension now seems to have extended into his new program. Sources say that UNC’s staff informed the Patriots last month that their scouts would be banned from Tar Heels practices. The announcement reportedly came just one day before a Patriots scout was set to observe an August practice session. Since then, New England has made no attempts to scout the team.
Other NFL teams are still permitted to attend UNC practices, but with notable restrictions. Scouts can only observe the first three periods of practice—which includes warmups and stretching—and they aren’t allowed to interact with coaches or other staff.
While these policies do not violate NCAA rules, they break traditional norms of collaboration between NFL teams and college programs. There is also a potential downside for Belichick’s players, who could miss out on exposure to NFL scouts ahead of the upcoming draft.
Even on a day marked by a solid win on the field, the headlines for Belichick at UNC continue to be shaped as much by drama off the field as by the team’s performance on it.
