North Carolina Tar Heels football coach Bill Belichick said Friday that he was attempting to copy some things his friend and former assistant coach Nick Saban had done while at Alabama.
Appearing on Friday’s edition of ESPN’s “College GameDay” ahead of the College Football Playoff matchup between No. 10 seed Indiana and No. 7 Notre Dame in South Bend, Belichick joined Saban, Rece Davis, Pat McAfee and others via video call.
The conversation included some mutually flattering words between Saban and Belichick. That shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone who has followed the career paths of both men. Saban was Belichick’s defensive coordinator with the Cleveland Browns from 1991-94.
“I learned more from you about evaluating players than anybody in my career because you had a great way of defining the criteria for what you were looking for,” Saban told Belichick. “You went out and did it. You’ve always identified it, and I think that’s been a key to your success. I know you’ll do that — even though you’ve got to recruit them, you can’t draft them — in college as well.”
As for how Belichick is trying to copy what Saban did at Alabama, Belichick explained it to McAfee this way:
“I appreciate Coach Saban’s comments about the evaluations that we did in Cleveland. I think I learned a lot more from him than he did from me. He’s a great evaluator. And then I watched him at Alabama put together essentially his scouting and evaluation staff. So now I’m copying a lot of things that I watched him do there and learned from the system he installed there.”
Belichick added:
“We’ll get players ready for the NFL, no matter what position they play. We’ll get them ready for their lives and their careers just by the accountability that comes with the program very much like Nick did at Alabama. We’ll see what kind of success that is, but very much like that model.”
Saban joked that that it had been easy for Belichick to copy his model at Alabama since it was Belichick’s model in the NFL.
Belichick told Saban:
“I remember when you went back to Michigan State and then to Alabama, you and I had conversations about how much you enjoyed developing the young players and having more of an impact on them. Even though I haven’t done it and just saw it when I was at Navy, I can really see where you’re coming from on that. It’s been very exciting, even in the short time that I’ve been here.”
Belichick was introduced as North Carolina’s new coach on Dec. 12. His first game will be against TCU on Aug. 30 next year in Chapel Hill.
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This article originally appeared on Roll Tide Wire: Bill Belichick says he is ‘copying’ things Nick Saban did at Alabama
