Bill Belichick Reportedly Bans Scouts from His Former Team at UNC

Bill Belichick’s former employer has been banned from visiting his UNC football team, according to multiple reports.

New England Patriots scouts have been denied “access” to Carolina Football by the university, ESPN reported. 

Three & Out’s John Middlekauff first reported the news.

Belichick spent 24 seasons with the Patriots as head coach and parted ways with the team in January 2024.

Since then, the eight-time Super Bowl winner has clashed with Patriots owner Robert Kraft about their shared history.

Over the summer, the 73-year-old coach pushed back on his former boss, who commented in a June Dudes on Dudes podcast that hiring Belichick came with a “big risk.”

“As I told Robert multiple times through the years, I took a big risk by taking the New England Patriots head coaching job,” Belichick said in a statement to ESPN. “I already had an opportunity to be the head coach of the New York Jets, but the ownership situation was unstable.”

In a guest spot with former Patriots stars Julian Edelman and Rob Gronkowski on their podcast, Kraft looked back on his own memory of hiring the coach.

“I think getting Bill Belichick to come to the Patriots in 1999 was a big risk and I got hammered in the Boston media, but he was with us for 24 years and we did okay,” he said.

In August, the rookie college coach took another thinly veiled shot at Kraft, telling The Boston Globe that he appreciates his new job because “there’s no owner, there’s no owner’s son.”

He added, “There’s no cap, everything that goes with the marketing and everything else, which I’m all for that. But it’s way less of what it was at that level. Generic NFL teams, you have the owner, president, general manager, personnel director, college director, pro director, cap guy, some other consultant, then head coach. I’d say when we had our best years in New England, we had fewer people and more of a direct vision. And as that expanded, it became harder to be successful.”

On Monday, Sept. 1, Belichick and his new team did not find success, losing their first game of the season in a 48-14 blowout to TCU.

Before the game, ESPN’s Pete Thamel noted that more than 20 scouts from 14 NFL teams were in attendance to see TCU — not UNC, which “has a talent deficit.” UNC’s roster boasts 70 new players, including 40 from the transfer portal.