CHAPEL HILL, N.C. — On Tuesday, for the first time since Bill Belichick was hired as North Carolina’s football coach, Michael Lombardi — UNC’s general manager and Belichick’s first personnel hire — spoke to reporters about his role and the program’s growing infrastructure and how he’s attempting to help Belichick transition to the college game.
And, no, the Super Bowl ring Lombardi wore on his right hand was no accident.
“Everything here is predicated on building a pro team,” Lombardi said. “We consider ourselves the 33rd team because everybody involved with our program has had some form or aspect in pro football.”
One of the reasons North Carolina was willing to make an unprecedented investment in football spending — notably, Belichick’s $10 million annual salary, double that of Mack Brown before him, plus a $10 million pool for assistant coach salaries — was because of the increasing need for that professional infrastructure, which Lombardi will help Belichick oversee. With the line between professional and college sports becoming increasingly blurred, especially due to skyrocketing name, image and likeness figures, hiring a staff with professional experience has tremendous benefits.
As a former NFL GM, for example, Lombardi already knows how to create a player board — “I call it a draft board,” Lombardi joked, “because my brain’s locked that way” — to best sift through and sort available talent, be it high schoolers or transfer portal entrants. That won’t be his job alone, either. According to multiple reports — UNC’s official staff page still only lists Belichick — the Tar Heels have hired at least five additional personnel staffers beyond Lombardi: Joe Anile (a former Jacksonville Jaguars and New England Patriots scout), Andrew Blaylock (formerly UCF’s assistant director of player personnel), Chris Mattes (a longtime Patriots staffer), Frantzy Jourdain (a longtime Patriots scout) and Cory Giddings (formerly UCF and Appalachian State’s director of player personnel).
Per Belichick’s initial term sheet, those hires fall within a hefty $5.3 million pool allocated for support staffers.
Of course, modern player acquisition doesn’t happen in a vacuum; it requires NIL resources — and therefore the management of the resources. (How North Carolina, one of the most prestigious men’s basketball schools in the country, handles revenue sharing between basketball and football will be fascinating to monitor.) Having operated within the construct of the NFL salary cap for decades, Lombardi is comfortable implementing an NIL payment structure based on a player’s on-field worth, rather than the rogue figures that have dominated headlines since the onset of NIL.
After winning six Super Bowl titles with the New England Patriots, Bill Belichick will be a college coach for the first time with North Carolina. (Bob Donnan / Imagn Images)
“If you’re a starter on the team, there’s going to be a certain value placed on what level of starter you are,” Lombardi said. “You just can’t arbitrarily say, ‘I like this guy, I like that guy.’ We’re not picking fruit here. You have to have a grading system — and so the grade reflects what you pay.”
But what talent is UNC after? Who has it added this offseason? And what should fans expect Belichick and Lombardi to prioritize? Exactly what they saw determined the outcome of Sunday’s Super Bowl: the trenches.
When Lombardi worked for Hall of Fame coach Bill Walsh in the 1980s, the San Francisco 49ers icon once entrusted Lombardi to write reports on three receivers entering the league that offseason: Al Toon, Eddie Brown — and Jerry Rice. But as much as the reports themselves, Lombardi still remembers what Walsh told him when he first made the request.
“He said, ‘We are now finally in a position to go get a big-time receiver, because the team’s really good around them,’” Lombardi said. “I said, ‘What do you mean by that? And (Walsh) said, ‘Well, we can get the ball to a great player now — because we’re good in both lines.’”
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To that point, of the 18 transfers UNC signed in the winter portal window — compared to 11 players who departed the program — eight play on the offensive or defensive lines. That includes two of the team’s four incoming four-star portal recruits, per 247Sports: offensive tackle Daniel King (Troy) and defensive lineman Pryce Yates (UConn), who earned defensive MVP honors against the Tar Heels in the Fenway Bowl.
Beyond those two, UNC’s top portal additions are defensive back Thaddeus Dixon (Washington) and linebacker Khmori House (Washington) — two former Huskies who followed Belichick’s son, Steve, from Seattle to Chapel Hill. Steve will serve as his father’s first college defensive coordinator.
Lombardi noted that UNC’s roster is far from a finished product and that the team planned to be aggressive in the spring portal window. “Every time you can acquire more talent,” he added, “it’s an important window.” Unlike the winter portal window — Belichick was signed midway through it, making life difficult for him and Lombardi to recruit players on the fly — UNC’s staff will have time to prepare before the spring window opens.
“When we got in here, we were reacting to the portal,” Lombardi said, “and now we can anticipate the portal, which certainly will help us.”
(Top photo: Jim Dedmon / Imagn Images)
This content is reposted from the source: https://www.nytimes.com/athletic/6132510/2025/02/12/bill-belichick-unc-football-michael-lombardi/
