It’s a good thing Bill Belichick and Frank Reich are not playing.
For the eight-time Super Bowl champion coach versus the journeyman who worked in the NFL at the same time, there was a wide gap between their football playing careers.
“I am glad we’re not playing each other,” Belichick said with a smile. “I’m not gonna be out there trying to tackle him, and that’s probably a good thing for North Carolina. In the end it comes down to the players you have, and he’ll put his players in a good spot. They’ll be fundamentally sound, they’ll be well coached, they’ll know what they’re doing. They don’t make a lot of mistakes, and they don’t get a lot of penalties.”
Both teams have general managers with little comparison, as well. Stanford has alumnus All-American Andrew Luck, a decorated quarterback who retired after seven seasons with the Colts, while UNC’s Mike Lombardi played at small college Hofstra.
Reich was a quarterback at Maryland, good enough to be drafted in the third round by the Buffalo Bills, where he mostly backed up Hall of Famer Jim Kelly before ending his career with short stints for the Panthers, Jets and Lions. Belichick was more of a lacrosse star than a football player at Wesleyan and went right to work in the NFL.
This season they are both in college football for the first time, Belichick as the surprise head coach of the Tar Heels and Reich as the interim coach at Stanford, which is now in the ACC and comes to Chapel Hill Saturday for a 4:30 kickoff.
Both teams have won only three games this season, with the Tar Heels beating just Syracuse among power 4 opponents while the Cardinal has wins at Boston College and over Florida State in Palo Alto. They must upset Carolina (an 8-point favorite) and beat Cal and Notre Dame at home to qualify for a bowl. With five losses, the Tar Heels need to win three of their last four games to earn a bowl bid; playing Wake Forest in Winston Salem will be a toss-up, but beating Duke (5-3) at home and N.C. State (5-4) in Raleigh will be very difficult despite UNC’s noticeable improvement lately.
Belichick was candid and actually joked around during his weekly press conference.
“We’ll have to go out there and make sure that, number one, we don’t make mistakes that cost us, and number two, that we’re able to do enough against what they’re good at to come out on top,” he said. “Each game is different. Everyone we’ve coached against is different, but I have a ton of respect for Frank and Andrew and their staff. Just watching him through two-thirds of the season, they’ve overcome adversity and played very competitive football.”
In the ACC, Carolina and Stanford are the two worst offensive teams. The Heels have moved up to seventh in defense while the Cardinal are 14th. It also Homecoming at UNC, if that helps.
Featured image via Associated Press/Adrian Kraus
Art Chansky is a veteran journalist who has written ten books, including best-sellers “Game Changers,” “Blue Bloods,” and “The Dean’s List.” He has contributed to WCHL for decades, having made his first appearance as a student in 1971. His “Sports Notebook” commentary airs daily on the 97.9 The Hill WCHL and his “Art’s Angle” opinion column runs weekly on Chapelboro.
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Art Chansky is a veteran journalist who has written ten books, including best-sellers “Game Changers,” “Blue Bloods,” and “The Dean’s List.” He has contributed to WCHL for decades, having made his first appearance as a student in 1971. His “Sports Notebook” commentary airs daily on the 97.9 The Hill WCHL and his “Art’s Angle” opinion column runs weekly on Chapelboro.
