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.
Kraft’s sexual activities occurred between his past and present wives.
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
He did win, albeit not nearly as much. He won eleven games with Matt Cassel, with the same team, for example. I think Belichick’s ship has beyond sailed, but I don’t ignore the prowess that he did display for a long time. Of course, we have to also consider the cheating, but that benefitted both Brady and Belichick. That doesn’t mean that they weren’t great at what they could do, but that’s something that should be acknowledged.
Of course, the Patriots’ decline began before Brady finally left, too. Belichick got a lot of credit for what Ernie Adams, Scott Pioli, and even Nick Caserio did for the team. Without them, Belichick’s personnel moves and roster decisions got incredibly worse (which of course frustrated Brady). Michael Lombardi doesn’t really come close to that, I don’t think. And then, of course, he aged poorly. I’m not surprised that things have fallen so far at this point.
Having a Brady would anyone into a winner, and I do think that that made Belichick much more comfortable than he should have been. Belichick obviously started believing in his own product too much, and there is an obvious regression. He definitely was a better coach in days past, and probably was never the great GM that we all thought he was in the 2010s and 2000s.
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
Agreed. There’s very little to scout. She’s probably doing the Patriots a favor by allowing them to spend more time with better prospects on other teams.
That’s hilariously petty.
“We cant have those cheaters around my team”
Well if Belichick and UNC are preventing scouts from drafting another Mitch Trubisky…they’re doing everyone a huge favor 🙂
Age has nothing to do with it. Young BB wouldn’t have done anything differently at NC under the current circumstances. Brady and Bill’s cronies are long gone and he’s been exposed. Furthermore, while he was still winning, he pursued Linda while she was married. I hope the Tarheels go winless.
lol I love how we read things from the media, who are the most petty people on the damn planet, and assume it’s all 100% accurate. No one ever questions why something is written or if there is an ulterior motive. I don’t understand how many times media has to blatantly lie (all kinds of media, going back literally hundreds of years) before people realize to take just about everything with a massive grain of salt
Are you saying that you don’t believe scouts from NE have been banned and the reasons why they’ve been banned???
Not the way it’s written here. When a “journalist” starts showing their obvious opinion in the information-based article by using words like “petty” in said article, it’s a dead giveaway to the journalists’ lack of integrity. And frankly I assume well over half of any article is greatly exaggerated and/or fabricated in some way anyway. So my assumption is that there is a way less drastic version of SOME of this happening, and it probably has been passed on to every team, not just New England.
I get what you’re saying about media spin. There’s definitely times where headlines or word choice make things sound way more dramatic than they are. That said, multiple outlets are reporting the same thing on the NE scouts ban. And assuming it’s true…i’d have to agree that it is petty.
Not a lot of talent there to scout anyway
The players should boycott Belichick that’s BS. I know the talent might not be great but that’s cause Bill can’t draft or buy the groceries.
I WANNA ASK SOMETHING, HOW CAN U STOP A SCOUTENTERING THE STADIUM AT GAME TIME, IF THE SCOUT BUYS A TICKET TO THE GAME AND WATCHES THE GAME HOW DO THEY EVEN KNOWS IF THERE ARE SCOUTS OUT THERE