Despite recent news that a Bill Belichick statue may be coming to Gillette Stadium (per ESPN’s Mike Reiss), some bad blood apparently remains between the rookie collegiate head coach and his former NFL team. 
The University of North Carolina, where Belichick now runs the football program, has reportedly banned the Patriots’ scouts from attending practices at its facility this season, according to ESPN’s Kalyn Kahler and Ben Volin of the Boston Globe. Patriots scouts are also not allowed to attend the Tar Heels’ home games, due to the team’s purported mistreatment of Belichick since he left New England.
Per Volin, the unfair treatment most likely refers to the Apple TV docuseries The Dynasty. The 10-part series, reported to be an independent project but with a copyright held by Kraft Dynasty LLC, focuses quite a bit on pinning the loss of quarterback Tom Brady and the team’s Super Bowl loss to the Eagles on the head coach, while glossing over many of the franchise’s successes under Belichick. Volin adds that NFL Films was originally meant to be involved in the project but stepped away due to the negative tone towards Belichick.
“Why would we let them in our home after how they have treated Belichick since he left?” a source with the Tar Heels said to The Globe. “We will help our players to the fullest, and we will help their scouts over the phone and sharing of film, but being treated fairly is a two-way street.”
ESPN was met with similar undertones of pettiness when they reached out to UNC general manager Michael Lombardi for comment, and he replied with a curt “good luck” before hanging up the phone.
The comments of The Globe’s source ring a bit hollow in their commitment to help their players. Lombardi and the Heels’ pro liaison Frantzy Jourdain were the ones who informed New England of their ban a day before one of the team’s scouts was scheduled to visit in August.
Scouts from other teams informed ESPN that UNC, under Belichick’s directive, is offering limited access to all NFL personnel. It’s not the ban the Patriots have received, but teams can “speak only with Jourdain,” and the Tar Heels’ college relations website, a page only NFL personnel have access to, reportedly says that “scouts will have zero access to coaches or other personnel people,” with the term “zero access” appearing twice more across the site. Per Kahler, one scout claimed that the Tar Heels limit scouts to watch only three periods of practice, while other schools mostly allow full practices to be watched.
All of this gatekeeping could be extremely harmful to the NFL prospects of players on the UNC football team. Obviously, much of the work in scouting comes from watching games and game film to evaluate the abilities of student athletes, but scouts often enjoy several benefits at school facilities, as well. Scouts are able to get in-person assessments at practices, and often, relationships are made with position coaches, personnel staff, and strength coaches that allow scouts access to candid testimonies on a player’s character or work ethic. By severing any access to those kinds of connections, NFL hopefuls won’t have anyone trustworthy advocating on their behalf.
The odd closed-door protocol hardly makes sense for the Patriots, though a line can easily be drawn to retribution against a former employer, but expanding that policy to the rest of the NFL feels disrespectful to the student athletes and neglectful of the duties of a college football program. It will be interesting to see how much these boundaries extend into the pre-draft process, in regard to the school’s pro day and private workouts with teams, but one hopes Belichick and Co. won’t continue standing in the way of their players and the NFL.
When reached for comment, ESPN reports that Patriots head coach Mike Vrabel told the media, “That’s an individual choice, and we’ll cross that bridge when we start looking at players. I’m going to focus on our football team. That’s their prerogative to make the decisions that they feel like are the best for them. We’ll have to find other ways to get the information for any players that we want to look at at North Carolina.”
Nikhil Mehta contributed to this post.
Why hurt a kids chances for making a team?
This is the first thought that came to my mind. His pettiness could ultimately limit opportunities and earning potential for his players. It’s only one team, so an NFL-quality player is likely to catch on with one of the other 31 teams. But a fringe player might need that 32nd team to catch on.
Also… Can Drake Maye visit his old team?
Very mature of Bill, regardless of the rationale.
Belichick is such a tool. Nothing better than watching his teams lose and lose big so he can leave after one sad year.
You know who is making this decision and it’s not a 73 year old man. Way to ruin your reputation for a piece of ***, Bill.
Belichick’s extended midlife crisis on a pretty clear trajectory that will see him drop a diss track during homecoming week.
Bill was using 1st round picks on guards from Chattanooga and is surprised he got told to take a hike
Bill doesn’t give an hoot nor an holler about “mistreatment” and I might go as far as to say that he doesn’t even know about this.
His life is being run by the succubus, a mysterious former escort, a third of his age, who he crossed paths with after it was discovered Robert Kraft was engaging in… extramarital transactions.
Everything about this hiring is wrong, he is too old, his woman is a drag on him and Lord knows what she does in private. This is going to make Fedora and Brown look like savants.
Is anyone really surprised by this? This man cannot win without Brady despite his god like treatment.
He will be gone after the year, this was the only way his son was getting a HC job
so he’s petty and stupid. he’s only hurting the kids he needs to realize that and stop letting his pride hurt the kids
The players are the primary group being hurt by this nonsense but not the only entity that will feel the repercussions. This short sighted and vindictive policy will likely have a cascading effect that can impact all future UNC students over the next 5-10 years.
Its highly unlikely that top recruits would willingly choose a school that intentionally limits its access to pro scouts which in turn will negatively affect the on field product. Since football is one of the primary sources of revenue for major colleges the disparity in revenue from playing in lower tier bowl games or missing them altogether, not having as many nationally televised games due to an inferior product and/or potentially losing booster money will surely be felt when the university sets it’s annual budget. In turn educators and support staff could be terminated, certain courses deemed too expensive could be eliminated, any necessary new hires will be offered less money than similar jobs at other schools, et cetera, et cetera… Surely the school will survive and life will go on but metaphorically speaking the school is self-amputating it’s entire leg by allowing Belichick to shoot it in the foot.
That UNC roster is god awful not much to even look at for the scouts anyways