We witnessed another ugly showing for Bill Belichick and the UNC football program on Saturday afternoon.
The Tar Heels essentially were doomed right from the jump, as a 75-yard trick play on the first play from scrimmage proved that Clemson was going to be too much for North Carolina to handle.
Following the game, Bill Belichick spoke to the media, answering a handful of questions while providing some insight as to his current thought process on his team.
Opening Statement
“A disappointing outcome for us today. I thought we had a good week. I think we were ready to go, and unfortunately we gave some big plays early in the game that really tilted the game, and we’re just never able to recover. The big plays in the passing game, I mean, we probably gave up 200 yards of passing on five plays. Three alignment penalties that were all our fault. So we just got to do a better job of coaching, a better job playing, and just eliminate the mistakes that are fixable.
I mean that there’s honestly not that many things that we can’t get right, but we got to do a better job of it, and we can’t give up plays like that defensively at the beginning of the game. It just tilts the score. It’s too much, so get back to work here tomorrow, and I think I expect the players to rebound like they did last week, and have another good week here. We’ll get ready to go and keep improving and keep fixing the things that we need to fix.”
Discussing Costly Self-Inflicted Mistakes
“Well, they don’t have all the time, but they happened two or three critical times today. Lack of concentration, and we need to do a better job coaching. … We have an illegal formation three times. We just can’t make those mistakes. When the players make them, that’s obviously bad. But the fact that they happen is part of that’s coaching too. So I’ll take my share of the responsibility on that. We've got to do a better job of coaching.”
Is this a bigger rebuild than Belichick anticipated?
“I’m just not going to make any evaluations like that. We’re just going to keep working every day and every week and let the guys get better, and the guys that play better will keep playing and the guys that don’t, maybe there’s other people that can compete and move ahead of them playing time. But we’re just going to keep grinding. I’m not going to evaluate where things are. Just take a week by week.”
The decision to start Max Johnson
“Gio (Lopez) didn’t practice much this week, so that really wasn’t an option. We’ll see where he is going forward. We’ll evaluate it. If there’s anything to evaluate, I don’t know. We’ll see what his situation is this week.”
Belichick's message to the team after the game
“I’ll keep my conversations with the team between myself and the team, but I’ll just say we’re gonna work through it and work our way out of it. We’ll get better every week and keep working every week to prepare for the next team. We’ll be ready to go, and that’s what we’re going to do.”