(Photo: Kevin Roy/TH247, 247Sports)
CHAPEL HILL - Five days out from hosting Texas Christian to open the football season, and first-year North Carolina Coach Bill Belichick took part in his game-week press conference of his legendary career Wednesday.
Belichick was at the podium for just under 20 minutes taking questions mostly about how he sees his team close to game time and also about starting quarterback Gio Lopez.
TarHeel247 highlighted the Lopez news in another content item. Here, we offer 3 Takeaways from Belichick's presser, video of his Q&A session, and a complete transcript of what he had to say:
No Preseason, No Problem
Bill Belichick was a head coach in 110 preseason games in the NFL, and when his team takes the field in the opener Monday night for a real game, he will have been a head coach in zero college preseason games because they don't exist.
But he did have last spring, intel from OTAs, and the last month of training camp to learn about his club. Even with no preseason games to gauge his club, Belichick doesn't appear to see it as much different. And with that, he knows what he can about the Tar Heels at this juncture.
"Well, the opening day is always opening day. I don't care where it is. And if you look at the NFL in the preseason games, say the average playing time for the veteran players was around 10 percent, so not very many snaps. We've said zero snaps. So you know, we'll see what happens there.
"But it really for us, it's just a process. It's preparation, it's practice, it's rest, recovery, and building on yesterday and doing it again. And so that's where we're at now. We're very specifically geared towards TCU, each day is its own, its own day of preparation, and there's really no looking back. We have things to do in the succeeding days, so we need to make the most out of every day, and we'll see what happens Monday night."
Lopez & The Playbook
At 6-foot-0 and 203 pounds, Lopez is a dual-threat quarterback who is adept at escaping problems, creating something out of nothing, and running plenty of designed parts of an offensive package. At South Alabama, Lopez ran an offense based out of the spread but was also balanced. At UNC, sources have indicated to TarHeel247 the Tar Heels will run some pro-base with various wrinkles. In other words, we will find out Monday night.
With that said, how much of the playbook can Carolina run with the lefthanded Lopez in the game?
"Well, we don't really have a whole playbook," Belichick said. "We do, but we don't, because we wouldn't do everything against everybody. We have certain things that we do against certain teams and the way they play, and maybe not so much on something else. So we would fine tune that based on the game. But, Gio has made a ton of progress. We've evaluated things through training camp.
"And now as we get ready for TCU, he'll be our starting quarterback. So, we'll give him the majority of reps in practice and make sure that we get him as much preparation as possible. But everybody needs to be ready to go. I feel very comfortable with him and what he's doing, but he'll get better as we go forward, because we just will. We have a lot of practices in front of us and a lot of games in front of us, and we'll all learn a lot from those. So, I think he's ready, but I think he'll be, like everybody, more ready as we go forward."
Defending The Frogs
TCU finished last season with a 9-4 record winning its last four games and six of its last seven. It was No. 31 nationally last season in total offense averaging 426.8 yards per contest. It was No. 8 in passing offense (312.9 yards), 15th in passing efficiency, and 15th in scoring at 33.5 points per contest.
Quarterback Josh Hoover was one of the more prolific passers in the nation as he completed 313 of 471 pass attempts, which is 66.5%, for 3,949 yards, 27 touchdowns, and 11 interceptions. Of his pass attempts, 31 were drops and only 13 were throwaways. He was sacked only 15 times and scrambled just 17 times, so the ball usually went into the air and remained in play when he dropped back to pass. His NFL rating was 101.3.
In watching TCU's offensive film, Belichick is impressed with what he sees.
"The number of explosive plays they get is impressive," he said. "Offensively, they can throw the ball down the field, go routes, post routes, seam (routes), things like that. They also can throw the ball on some intermediate type throws, like slants and quick end cuts, things like that. And then they have plays behind the line of scrimmage, screens and hitches and so forth.
"They make a lot of yardage with the ball when the receiver gets the ball in their hands. They're very good after the catch. Now some of those guys are gone, but they also brought in some explosive players that we've seen. They really make you defend all the blades of grass on the field, the sideline to sideline, the line of scrimmage to 50 yards down the field.
"So you've got a lot to defend, and they do a good job attacking all of it, and where you're light, that's where they want to throw and where you're heavy, they go somewhere else. So they're a tough offense to match up against. Coach (Kendal) Briles, Coach (Sonny) Dykes, do a good job of putting stress on the defense and this is one of those games where defensively, everybody will have to really do a good job with their responsibility."
Below is video of Belichick's presser followed by a complete transcript of what he had to say:
Transcript by Bryant Baucum: