CHAPEL HILL — For the first time as a coach, Jamie Collins met with the media. He held a press conference on Thursday to discuss his experiences, UNC's linebacker room and what it's like seeing Bill Belichick coach in the college space.
Collins had a 10-year NFL playing career before becoming the inside linebackers coach at North Carolina.
In his decade-long career, Collins had 455 tackles in 125 games, 19 forced fumbles and 64 tackles for a loss.
Here is video of Collins' Q&A session and notes from what he had to say:
Andrew Simpson and Khmori House
"The future is very bright for them. As soon as (An)Drew got here, they hit it off pretty quickly. They communicate a lot; they communicate well together. They play well together. It's still early, we still have a lot of time, but those guys are definitely holding us down on defense. They take control. They're doing everything that we ask them to do. I'm grateful and proud that I have those guys to coach because they listen and they do what we tell them to do."
Outside of general manager Michael Lombardi, Collins has the most experience with Belichick in the program
"The only difference is college and the NFL. He's still Bill, and that's what you're gonna get out of him: consistency. And that's what I appreciate the most, just being consistent. As long as somebody's consistent, you can't judge them, you can't say anything about them. He's gonna give you his best every day, all day, and he's always gonna be the same dude. To me, the difference is just really the NFL. The rules and stuff like that. He's still the same dude, he's still the same guy. He's gonna give you all he's got and he's gonna expect you to give him all you got."
Establishing the identity of the linebackers
"We try to establish it (the identity) early. I try to establish it early, I want to make it known because the sooner we get to play together and buy in together, the better we'll be and the easier it'll be. I hit on it every day, I check in with the guys mentally every day. Another thing that I do, being the linebacker coach, is I check in with the players every day. I make sure they're good, I make sure we're good and I make sure they're ready to go. I always say, every day, your brother needs you. Your brother needs the call, your brother needs the right alignment and your brother needs to know the personnel. I do that stuff every day to let them know, so we can play together. We work together, we grind together, we bleed together and we can sweat together. So I try to stay on them every day."
Divvying up reps at linebacker
"The roles are the roles. So the two guys, House and Simpson, they get a chunk of the reps. But we all roll, we roll because I want to see everybody play. I want everybody to have an opportunity. I want everybody to have a chance and that's how you weave out if somebody can play or cannot play. I don't do, like, just one group. I want to see all the guys in there. We all got an opportunity, we all need to take advantage of the opportunity that we get and we can all showcase what we got when we get in there. So, the rotation is the rotation. We rotate all the guys because, once again, we need all the looks from everybody."