Tom Brady Explains How Bill Belichick Will Prepare UNC Players for NFL on Video

NFL legend Tom Brady believes North Carolina head coach Bill Belichick can successfully turn the Tar Heels into a finishing school for the pros.

Brady told Fox Sports colleague Joel Klatt that UNC players should expect to have "the most prepared, the most hardworking coach that I've ever been around." To that end, Belichick will train his players for life in the NFL while helping them improve now.

The retired quarterback suggested there will, however, be an adjustment as Belichick works with talent that is much further from the finished product than he was accustomed to having with the New England Patriots.

Schools have long pointed to their NFL alumni as a way to sell themselves to prospective recruits. Anybody with aspirations of playing football beyond the college level wants to be somewhere they can refine their game and impress pro scouts.

Nobody has made that part of the sales pitch as explicit as North Carolina.

Before he even landed the job, Belichick proposed a vision of running the Tar Heels like an NFL operation. General manager Michael Lombardi has referred to the program as the league's 33rd team.

Administrators will be happy with the early results. North Carolina is sitting 18th in 247Sports' composite team rankings for 2026 after a 36th-place finish in 2025, when Belichick and his staff didn't have a full cycle to identify and recruit targets.

But the coaching legend will have to provide more tangible results sooner or later. To make this experiment work, UNC has to win games and build a steady pipeline to the NFL, and the former is necessary in order to make the latter possible. Attracting blue-chip recruits and impact transfers is tough when you're adding losing season to losing season.

The Tar Heels kick off the 2025 campaign on Sept. 1 against TCU. After an offseason in which his relationship with Jordon Hudson was a source of constant chatter, Belichick will probably love nothing more than to have the focus back on football.