September 3, 2025 • 12 mins
Documentaries? A young girlfriend? Pre-promising careers for his son? THIS version of Bill does NOT care anymore.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:04):
Earlier this year when Bill Belichick was hired as the
head coach at North Carolina, I was skeptical if somebody
that has been as successfully as he has been in
the NFL would want to rebuild. If you go back
and look at his career, he did not do all
that well with the Jets and the Browns. But when
he got to New England and got a chance not
(00:26):
only coach but also and he wasn't a great general manager,
but he got to pick a few of the of
the players, and he certainly was a defensive guy. He's
never been that big on offense. But then a guy
named Tom Brady showed up, and Tom Brady replaced Drew Bledsoe,
and the rest, as they say, is history. And he
had an amazing run for all those years that he
(00:47):
was in New England, and the success of the New
England Patriots was hand and it was a handshake basically
between those two players. You had a coach that knew
what he was doing and that was motivated with a
player that knew what he was doing and he was motivated.
It's very similar and certainly not unlike at all what
(01:07):
the Spurs had with Duncan and Popovich for eighteen twenty
twenty one years, whatever it was, and they and Pop
has always been the first to tell you, I wouldn't
be half the coach I am if I didn't have
one of the best players who've ever played the game.
And Tim Duncan was one of those guys that allowed
his coach to coach him. And as much as Brady
and Belichick often clashed, Brady understood that Belichick usually had
(01:32):
his best interest and he worked with the offensive coordinators
and stayed within the game plan and they were incredibly,
incredibly successful. He doesn't have Tom Brady there, and so
when Belichick took the job at North Carolina, there was
way too many people that thought he would just snap
his fingers and be this great coach again. And I've
been saying this on this show for the three plus
years we've been doing it, and other shows I've done
(01:54):
over the years, and things I've had opinions on on
Facebook or other social media posts. And it's never about
the coach unless there's a great player. Yes, bad coaches
can screw up good players, but good to mediocre coaches
can be great when they have a great player and
they understand how to massage that person, to massage that
(02:16):
ego and to make that player do what to get
the most out of them and out of their ability.
The North Carolina tar Heels don't have that many great
players yet, and maybe they will, and maybe a lot
of people will want to go play for Bill Belichick,
but in this era, more often than not more players
want to go to North Carolina because they're getting paid
more than they can get paid someplace else, and they're
(02:38):
going to have to be able to have North Carolina
alums and boosters that put it at the forefront that
they're going to spend for top talent and to keep
those that talent, especially North Carolina talent, from going to
Clemson or Miami or SMU or any other ACC school
that also has similar amounts of money. This has become
an arms race, and whoever has the most arms is
(03:01):
usually going to win, and that's usually done because you're
spending more than anyone else is. I think Bill Belichick
would be a really good coach in college if he
had a roster that was as good as the one
he had with the New England Patriots. And I think
this is going to be interesting to see how this
for lack of a better word, experiment goes because people
(03:23):
that have been to the mountaintop and one usually love
another challenge. But if they see that that challenge is
a lesson in futility, they often figured it out. Listen,
this wasn't going to work. And at seventy three years old,
sometimes that challenge is more of a mountain than you
think it is. Because as much as I would like
to have the energy and all the physical attributes that
(03:47):
you have when you're thirty years younger, and maybe also
the desire at times to do things when you're thirty
years younger, and you don't get angry as much when
things don't go your way when you're thirty as opposed
to seventy. There's a lot of things that change as
you get into an advanced agens, and I think that
this is going to be really interesting to see what
happens with North Carolina. I was never convinced that they
(04:08):
were going to even be a five hundred team this year,
and I'm less convinced now that they're going to get
to that number. He'll figure out some things and he'll
teach players how to do it. But when they line up,
if the guy on the other side of the ball
is better, and you don't have somebody like Tom Brady
to make it to offset that and overcome those things.
Good luck, and then we're going to evaluate at the
(04:29):
end of the year, do you want to do this
again or not? Now. Michael brought something up a little
while ago, and that is there's a lot of people
that want to see Bill Belichick fail for a number
of reasons. I think everybody wants to see people who
have had success in their lives fail because they're just
tired of that person having success, or somebody, not everybody.
I'll admit I'm a front runner. I like watching a
(04:50):
good players play. I'm a Tiger Woods fan, and he's
the greatest player I've ever seen golf. Jack Nicholas was good, too,
but I think Tiger did more things athletically than Jack could.
I am a fan of people who are successful at
what they're doing, and the more that you can hang
around people that are successful, sometimes that success will rub
off on you and you'll find success in whatever endeavor
(05:11):
that you're doing. Some people don't think it's right that
he is dating a twenty four year old I don't
think that's anybody else's business except him. In the twenty
four year old, they're both considering adults. They can do
whatever they want. Some may find it creepy, some may
find it heroic that he's able to pull that off.
However you feel is your opinion, and I'm fine with
(05:32):
either one of them. I really don't care. But I
think the overwhelming majority, while some people are going to
relish in his failure, is because of the success he
had at New England and not necessarily what the plan
is going to be or what the outcome is going
to be at North Carolina. But he's got a major,
major uphill battle. Now, one last thing on this and
then get Mike's thoughts on this. Colin said today his
(05:54):
coaching staff is friends and family. It's a reunion of
people he likes. Sometimes you have to go out and
get an offense and defensive coordinator and coaches that you
know are really good coaches. Yeah, but I'm not going
to go break bread with them. We're not going to dinner.
But for three hours a day, we're going to practice together,
and for three hours a day in a game, we're
going to coach together, because that's what's best for this
(06:15):
team and that's what's going to make this team win.
You often have to make tough decisions when you're hiring people,
and sometimes you can't just hire your best friends. And
I think the most important thing that any leader can do,
and there's nobody that was better than this than Pop
throughout the years, is hire people and allow them to
do their job, and allow them to speak their mind.
(06:36):
He didn't mind dissension. He didn't mind somebody disagreeing with him.
He may not always do what the other guy thought
was right assistant coach or a player, but he always
wanted openness and discussion. And when you have a bunch
of yes men hanging around you, that tells you you're
great no matter what. When you're doing things that everybody
knows is not right and your inner circle is telling
(06:57):
you you're doing great, that's usually a recipe for his.
So I think Bill Belichick, if he's going to make
this work, is going to have to find some people
that are going to challenge him not only as a
football coach, but as a decision maker in the things
that he's doing to try to make this team successful.
Speaker 2 (07:13):
So real quick, just to rub it in too, Bill Belichick,
you know one of the funniest memes that I saw
over the weekend was that we had a breaking transfer
portal news that Jordan Hudson was going to be transferring
out of North Carolina.
Speaker 1 (07:27):
That one.
Speaker 2 (07:27):
That one was like, Mike drop, here's a beer for you.
On that one. I'll retort and disagree with you on
as far as I don't think Bill Belichick will ever
be or could ever be a good college football coach,
especially in this new day and age to where it's
(07:48):
all about how much money am I getting. It's not
about how much am I playing. It's tell me what
you're gonna pay me, and then I'll decide if I
want to play for you, and maybe all all all,
I'll try to give one hundred percent. But with Bill Belichick,
his style worked in the NFL because he had all
of the personnel that took care of all of that,
(08:10):
you know, the personal issues and all of the ego stuff.
It was draw up the x's and o's, Bill and
then get players, coach them in the right and the
right technique and everything. Being a college coach, not that
being an NFL coach wasn't twenty four to seven, but
being a college football coach is like thirty six seven.
(08:35):
It's like you basically do not sleep because you have
to keep constantly recruiting all throughout the day, even in game,
like we half heartedly joke, you know, Robert Henry's seventy
five yard touchdown against the Aggies. The one thing Coach
Trailer doesn't have to worry about is he's out of
eligibility years, so he doesn't have to worry about trying
(08:56):
to convince that player after one play in week one
to stay with his team. Bill Belichick has to do
that every single game.
Speaker 1 (09:07):
And there's some players that will accept criticism when you
yell at them, and there's some people that will run
and hide from it. And honestly, the best players will
accept the criticism. And you know, we it didn't happen
very often, but we watch Spurs games where Pop was
halfway out on the floor yelling at Tim Duncan and
the rest of the team's looking, Well, if he's going
to talk to Tim Duncan that way, then I gotta
(09:28):
do it even better because he can talk to me
that way well. And to have a player that's willing
to accept criticism, I think if you coddle people too much,
it's going to show them that you don't love them,
that you don't care that much about them. But if
you have tough love, and if you make sure that
when they make a mistake, they know they made a
mistake and maybe there's even consequences for that mistake. If
(09:49):
they want to leave, that's just showed to me, is
showing a sign of weakness. It goes back to something
I've been talking about for thirty years. In this participation trophy.
We don't want to or kids feelings, so we make
sure that they don't get there, they ever get their
feelings hurt, and then when they face adversity, they don't
know how to handle it. I want an athlete that
faces adversity that understands that he messed things up and
(10:11):
he's got to fix it to be able to get
in the game and play more. And that's the player
that's usually motivated to go from good to great.
Speaker 2 (10:18):
Well, look at Tony Parker, I mean Tony Parker has said,
and even Pop has said, the way that Tony got
treated by Pop, I mean Pop would have been canceled
a long time ago. But Tony, Tony took it on
the chin because that's what great players, do they accept
(10:38):
being ridiculed to better themself? And again, like, you know,
not that Jimmy Johnson didn't ever chew out Troy or
Emmett or Michael Irvin, but I mean the fact that
the greatest power forward of all time, with Tim Duncan,
if Pop gone on him, you knew if you were
the last guy on the bench, You're like, oh, bleep,
(11:00):
I've better make sure I do what they say.
Speaker 1 (11:03):
But when you go watch that that show with the Cowboys,
it's on Netflix right now, you're gonna understand that when
that that Troy Aikman and Jimmy Johnson had some communication
issues early on, until both people realize that the other
one wanted they both wanted the same thing, and that
Troy wanted to yell at his coach and he wanted
the coach to yell back at him, and he wanted
(11:25):
to win just as badly as Jimmy did. And Jimmy
wanted to win just as much as Troy did. And
to me, that's something that you got to pay the most.
You gotta you gotta put into the end of the
works as well. Bill Belichick is, And I don't think
Bill Belichick's gonna coddle players if he'll run them off
before he does that. But he's gonna have to get
better players, and then he's gonna have to get a
coaching staff that's gonna tell him this is the way
(11:47):
we need to do it. And especially in this day
and age, you can't just go out there and say, well,
we're gonna hold the other team to seventeen points and
win the game. If you're not, if you're not scoring
thirty in most games, you're not gonna win. And yeah,
I think it was forty four to fourteen the other day.
Well let's say that the tar he'll score twenty eight
instead of fourteen. If they could put more points on
(12:08):
the board, that's less time that the other team has
to score. It's possessions that you're keeping the ball that
is also very much important in what in the landscape,
not only the pros, but certainly in college. You got
to average thirty points a game. All right, Coming up
in the five o'clock hour, our NFL picks this year.
It's gonna Donnelly be me and Mike Bartlett, but Shane
will be a part of our NFL picks as well.
(12:30):
In Week one and throughout the season and also Ernie
Els has issued Tiger a challenge. We'll tell you what
they have in store coming up. It's the Andy average
show on the ticket.
Earlier this year when Bill Belichick was hired as the
head coach at North Carolina, I was skeptical if somebody
that has been as successfully as he has been in
the NFL would want to rebuild. If you go back
and look at his career, he did not do all
that well with the Jets and the Browns. But when
he got to New England and got a chance not
(00:26):
only coach but also and he wasn't a great general manager,
but he got to pick a few of the of
the players, and he certainly was a defensive guy. He's
never been that big on offense. But then a guy
named Tom Brady showed up, and Tom Brady replaced Drew Bledsoe,
and the rest, as they say, is history. And he
had an amazing run for all those years that he
(00:47):
was in New England, and the success of the New
England Patriots was hand and it was a handshake basically
between those two players. You had a coach that knew
what he was doing and that was motivated with a
player that knew what he was doing and he was motivated.
It's very similar and certainly not unlike at all what
(01:07):
the Spurs had with Duncan and Popovich for eighteen twenty
twenty one years, whatever it was, and they and Pop
has always been the first to tell you, I wouldn't
be half the coach I am if I didn't have
one of the best players who've ever played the game.
And Tim Duncan was one of those guys that allowed
his coach to coach him. And as much as Brady
and Belichick often clashed, Brady understood that Belichick usually had
(01:32):
his best interest and he worked with the offensive coordinators
and stayed within the game plan and they were incredibly,
incredibly successful. He doesn't have Tom Brady there, and so
when Belichick took the job at North Carolina, there was
way too many people that thought he would just snap
his fingers and be this great coach again. And I've
been saying this on this show for the three plus
years we've been doing it, and other shows I've done
(01:54):
over the years, and things I've had opinions on on
Facebook or other social media posts. And it's never about
the coach unless there's a great player. Yes, bad coaches
can screw up good players, but good to mediocre coaches
can be great when they have a great player and
they understand how to massage that person, to massage that
(02:16):
ego and to make that player do what to get
the most out of them and out of their ability.
The North Carolina tar Heels don't have that many great
players yet, and maybe they will, and maybe a lot
of people will want to go play for Bill Belichick,
but in this era, more often than not more players
want to go to North Carolina because they're getting paid
more than they can get paid someplace else, and they're
(02:38):
going to have to be able to have North Carolina
alums and boosters that put it at the forefront that
they're going to spend for top talent and to keep
those that talent, especially North Carolina talent, from going to
Clemson or Miami or SMU or any other ACC school
that also has similar amounts of money. This has become
an arms race, and whoever has the most arms is
(03:01):
usually going to win, and that's usually done because you're
spending more than anyone else is. I think Bill Belichick
would be a really good coach in college if he
had a roster that was as good as the one
he had with the New England Patriots. And I think
this is going to be interesting to see how this
for lack of a better word, experiment goes because people
(03:23):
that have been to the mountaintop and one usually love
another challenge. But if they see that that challenge is
a lesson in futility, they often figured it out. Listen,
this wasn't going to work. And at seventy three years old,
sometimes that challenge is more of a mountain than you
think it is. Because as much as I would like
to have the energy and all the physical attributes that
(03:47):
you have when you're thirty years younger, and maybe also
the desire at times to do things when you're thirty
years younger, and you don't get angry as much when
things don't go your way when you're thirty as opposed
to seventy. There's a lot of things that change as
you get into an advanced agens, and I think that
this is going to be really interesting to see what
happens with North Carolina. I was never convinced that they
(04:08):
were going to even be a five hundred team this year,
and I'm less convinced now that they're going to get
to that number. He'll figure out some things and he'll
teach players how to do it. But when they line up,
if the guy on the other side of the ball
is better, and you don't have somebody like Tom Brady
to make it to offset that and overcome those things.
Good luck, and then we're going to evaluate at the
(04:29):
end of the year, do you want to do this
again or not? Now. Michael brought something up a little
while ago, and that is there's a lot of people
that want to see Bill Belichick fail for a number
of reasons. I think everybody wants to see people who
have had success in their lives fail because they're just
tired of that person having success, or somebody, not everybody.
I'll admit I'm a front runner. I like watching a
(04:50):
good players play. I'm a Tiger Woods fan, and he's
the greatest player I've ever seen golf. Jack Nicholas was good, too,
but I think Tiger did more things athletically than Jack could.
I am a fan of people who are successful at
what they're doing, and the more that you can hang
around people that are successful, sometimes that success will rub
off on you and you'll find success in whatever endeavor
(05:11):
that you're doing. Some people don't think it's right that
he is dating a twenty four year old I don't
think that's anybody else's business except him. In the twenty
four year old, they're both considering adults. They can do
whatever they want. Some may find it creepy, some may
find it heroic that he's able to pull that off.
However you feel is your opinion, and I'm fine with
(05:32):
either one of them. I really don't care. But I
think the overwhelming majority, while some people are going to
relish in his failure, is because of the success he
had at New England and not necessarily what the plan
is going to be or what the outcome is going
to be at North Carolina. But he's got a major,
major uphill battle. Now, one last thing on this and
then get Mike's thoughts on this. Colin said today his
(05:54):
coaching staff is friends and family. It's a reunion of
people he likes. Sometimes you have to go out and
get an offense and defensive coordinator and coaches that you
know are really good coaches. Yeah, but I'm not going
to go break bread with them. We're not going to dinner.
But for three hours a day, we're going to practice together,
and for three hours a day in a game, we're
going to coach together, because that's what's best for this
(06:15):
team and that's what's going to make this team win.
You often have to make tough decisions when you're hiring people,
and sometimes you can't just hire your best friends. And
I think the most important thing that any leader can do,
and there's nobody that was better than this than Pop
throughout the years, is hire people and allow them to
do their job, and allow them to speak their mind.
(06:36):
He didn't mind dissension. He didn't mind somebody disagreeing with him.
He may not always do what the other guy thought
was right assistant coach or a player, but he always
wanted openness and discussion. And when you have a bunch
of yes men hanging around you, that tells you you're
great no matter what. When you're doing things that everybody
knows is not right and your inner circle is telling
(06:57):
you you're doing great, that's usually a recipe for his.
So I think Bill Belichick, if he's going to make
this work, is going to have to find some people
that are going to challenge him not only as a
football coach, but as a decision maker in the things
that he's doing to try to make this team successful.
Speaker 2 (07:13):
So real quick, just to rub it in too, Bill Belichick,
you know one of the funniest memes that I saw
over the weekend was that we had a breaking transfer
portal news that Jordan Hudson was going to be transferring
out of North Carolina.
Speaker 1 (07:27):
That one.
Speaker 2 (07:27):
That one was like, Mike drop, here's a beer for you.
On that one. I'll retort and disagree with you on
as far as I don't think Bill Belichick will ever
be or could ever be a good college football coach,
especially in this new day and age to where it's
(07:48):
all about how much money am I getting. It's not
about how much am I playing. It's tell me what
you're gonna pay me, and then I'll decide if I
want to play for you, and maybe all all all,
I'll try to give one hundred percent. But with Bill Belichick,
his style worked in the NFL because he had all
of the personnel that took care of all of that,
(08:10):
you know, the personal issues and all of the ego stuff.
It was draw up the x's and o's, Bill and
then get players, coach them in the right and the
right technique and everything. Being a college coach, not that
being an NFL coach wasn't twenty four to seven, but
being a college football coach is like thirty six seven.
(08:35):
It's like you basically do not sleep because you have
to keep constantly recruiting all throughout the day, even in game,
like we half heartedly joke, you know, Robert Henry's seventy
five yard touchdown against the Aggies. The one thing Coach
Trailer doesn't have to worry about is he's out of
eligibility years, so he doesn't have to worry about trying
(08:56):
to convince that player after one play in week one
to stay with his team. Bill Belichick has to do
that every single game.
Speaker 1 (09:07):
And there's some players that will accept criticism when you
yell at them, and there's some people that will run
and hide from it. And honestly, the best players will
accept the criticism. And you know, we it didn't happen
very often, but we watch Spurs games where Pop was
halfway out on the floor yelling at Tim Duncan and
the rest of the team's looking, Well, if he's going
to talk to Tim Duncan that way, then I gotta
(09:28):
do it even better because he can talk to me
that way well. And to have a player that's willing
to accept criticism, I think if you coddle people too much,
it's going to show them that you don't love them,
that you don't care that much about them. But if
you have tough love, and if you make sure that
when they make a mistake, they know they made a
mistake and maybe there's even consequences for that mistake. If
(09:49):
they want to leave, that's just showed to me, is
showing a sign of weakness. It goes back to something
I've been talking about for thirty years. In this participation trophy.
We don't want to or kids feelings, so we make
sure that they don't get there, they ever get their
feelings hurt, and then when they face adversity, they don't
know how to handle it. I want an athlete that
faces adversity that understands that he messed things up and
(10:11):
he's got to fix it to be able to get
in the game and play more. And that's the player
that's usually motivated to go from good to great.
Speaker 2 (10:18):
Well, look at Tony Parker, I mean Tony Parker has said,
and even Pop has said, the way that Tony got
treated by Pop, I mean Pop would have been canceled
a long time ago. But Tony, Tony took it on
the chin because that's what great players, do they accept
(10:38):
being ridiculed to better themself? And again, like, you know,
not that Jimmy Johnson didn't ever chew out Troy or
Emmett or Michael Irvin, but I mean the fact that
the greatest power forward of all time, with Tim Duncan,
if Pop gone on him, you knew if you were
the last guy on the bench, You're like, oh, bleep,
(11:00):
I've better make sure I do what they say.
Speaker 1 (11:03):
But when you go watch that that show with the Cowboys,
it's on Netflix right now, you're gonna understand that when
that that Troy Aikman and Jimmy Johnson had some communication
issues early on, until both people realize that the other
one wanted they both wanted the same thing, and that
Troy wanted to yell at his coach and he wanted
the coach to yell back at him, and he wanted
(11:25):
to win just as badly as Jimmy did. And Jimmy
wanted to win just as much as Troy did. And
to me, that's something that you got to pay the most.
You gotta you gotta put into the end of the
works as well. Bill Belichick is, And I don't think
Bill Belichick's gonna coddle players if he'll run them off
before he does that. But he's gonna have to get
better players, and then he's gonna have to get a
coaching staff that's gonna tell him this is the way
(11:47):
we need to do it. And especially in this day
and age, you can't just go out there and say, well,
we're gonna hold the other team to seventeen points and
win the game. If you're not, if you're not scoring
thirty in most games, you're not gonna win. And yeah,
I think it was forty four to fourteen the other day.
Well let's say that the tar he'll score twenty eight
instead of fourteen. If they could put more points on
(12:08):
the board, that's less time that the other team has
to score. It's possessions that you're keeping the ball that
is also very much important in what in the landscape,
not only the pros, but certainly in college. You got
to average thirty points a game. All right, Coming up
in the five o'clock hour, our NFL picks this year.
It's gonna Donnelly be me and Mike Bartlett, but Shane
will be a part of our NFL picks as well.
(12:30):
In Week one and throughout the season and also Ernie
Els has issued Tiger a challenge. We'll tell you what
they have in store coming up. It's the Andy average
show on the ticket.
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