CHAPEL HILL – Delaware and Missouri State moving up from the FCS level this coming football season means there will be 136 Football Bowl Subdivision programs in the nation. One of them fancies itself as the 33rd NFL organization.
That is how first-year North Carolina Football Coach Bill Belichick and General Manager Michael Lombardi view their new program. This isn’t Carolina football as fans have known it. UNC has taken on a whole new identity, and a major pitch to high school and transfer portal recruits is if they want to play in the NFL, why not start now in Chapel Hill?
"Everything we do here is predicated on building a pro team,” Lombardi said last week in a press conference inside the Kenan Football Center. “We consider ourselves the 33rd (NFL) team, because everybody involved with our program has had some form of aspect in pro football. And Moses (Cabrera), our strength coach, spent a lot of time,14 years in New England.”
Most of Belichick’s coaching staff hires have some NFL experience, including Freddie Kitchens, the lone position coach holdover from the Mack Brown era. Tight ends coach the last two seasons with the Tar Heels, Kitchens has vast experience as an assistant in the NFL, including as the head coach of the Cleveland Browns in 2019.
There is a sense of urgency that comes with the NFL players’ mindset. They play for game checks, play for survival in a sport with a short shelf life. And often, players get one shot to make it without much patience from franchises.
That is one of the key selling points now at UNC. As a Tar Heel, players will learn the disciplines required to make it at the next level. They will receive on-field coaching at an NFL level, watch and breakdown film as pros, and run sophisticated schemes on both sides of the ball that will cement their understanding of the Sunday league’s highly nuanced approaches.
“Our program will be one thing that's always been important to Coach Belichick is what happens on the field has to happen on the practice field,” Lombardi said. “Practice execution becomes game reality. It's a sign that used to hang in the Patriots facility, and that's the same thing in the strength room. We're going to do things that are going to translate to the field."
Perhaps five years ago before NIL and the chaotic transfer portal, pushing any college program as fielding a semblance of NFL motif would have been viewed with crossed eyes. But times have so rapidly changed it doesn’t really strike as Belichick and Lombardi biting off more than they can chew.
Player acquisitions are much like the NFL now, but with no draft process, all talent must be convinced to wear Carolina blue. Salaries for players, which is what NIL has become, opportunity, being ensconced in the daily drumbeat of a pseudo NFL franchise, and the intricate training make playing at an ACC school known more for basketball than football a professional proposition.
"I do think there are a lot of parallels,” Belichick said at his introductory press conference in December. “There's certainly some differences, but there are some parallels. And I think that's the reason for the general structure of Michael as a general manager and myself as a coach and working together collaboratively like we have done in a professional organization.
“So yeah, I do think there are some parallels. There's differences, for sure, but yes."
The differences are the players are still college athletes. They must attend classes and maintain a GPA that keeps them eligible. They also have parents that often meddle when that rarely happens in the NFL, and they have the young lives of teenagers becoming young adults.
That, however, is why Belichick and Lombardi believe their new wave program will resonate with top talent and lead to success on the field. But only if the college end of the program goes according to plan.
“There's way more names that I'm dealing with,” Lombardi said about college as opposed to the NFL. “When you work as the general manager in the NFL, you're dealing with one draft class, you're dealing with one free agent class, and you can prepare for that. Now you're dealing with the 2026 class, the 2027 class, the 2028 class.
“So there's a lot more names to deal with, so there's more volume than it would be in pro football, but the job is very similar. You have to accurately predict the future of players, talent and their character, and then you've got to assign a dollar sign to it. And you've got to be able to have in concert, the ability to develop the talent from within.”
And do so like the 33rd team of the National Football League.
