Pro Football Rumors
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...
