Bill Belichick Reveals Major Difference Between Coaching College and Pro Football

Bill Belichick will get his first crack at coaching a meaningful college football game on Labor Day when North Carolina hosts TCU for the season-opener. Curiosity is through the roof to see how arguably the greatest NFL coach to ever do it transitions to a different level. Some actual on-field results will be a change from the two content buckets that Belichick has been filling: podcast fodder and describing what's different about coaching at the two levels.

He offered more of the latter on Wednesday, observing that there's been more action on the practice field.

“We’ve done a lot more live work here than we ever did in the NFL, at any team I was ever on,” Belichick said. “So that part of it’s been actually an interesting thing to see, you know, some of the coaches that are on our staff that have had a lot of college experience have talked about the necessity to do that. Again, obviously, without preseason games it’s, you know, we do need to do it, we’ve done it."

Belichick praised his team for their work as they try to balance creating some intensity and avoiding injury.

“The players have done a really good job of adapting to that. We really haven’t had too many issues,” he said. “Very few injuries to deal with, even though we’ve had quite a bit of contact in our padded days. I think that part’s been really, really good. The amount of contact that we’ve had with the very few guys losing any playing time at all because of it, has been good.”

The Tar Heels and Horned Frogs will hit for real on Sept. 1 at 8 p.m. ET.