Why Bobby Bones Will be Watching Bill Belichick’s UNC Year Two VERY Closely

On a scale of one to ten, how much does a lifelong Patriots fan care about Bill Belichick's second year at North Carolina?

"I am less than zero interested in North Carolina football," Bobby Bones said.

The love for Belichick himself is not in question. Bones led with it: everything he did for the team Bones rooted for, all that winning, put up a statue, he should already have a gold jacket. The Tar Heels are simply a different proposition.

TJ was no help either, and for an unusually specific reason.

"I got so many teams, Bobby. I just don't have the capacity to take on another one right now," he said, which is when it came out that TJ has recently become a die-hard Oregon fan, a development Jay Feely learned about live.

But Bones is watching, in his way.

"I am interested for one more season," he said. Belichick went 4-8 last year, and Bones liked the story on the merits, pushing back when it was suggested the year mostly generated jokes. It does not have to be wholesome to be interesting. The greatest NFL coach of all time took a college job.

North Carolina plays TCU this week in Dublin, which is where Bones drew a line.

College football overseas does not make sense to him, and the reasoning is about how the two sports get their fans. You can bond with an NFL team from anywhere. College football runs on where you grew up, where you went to school, where your father went to school. In Dublin, there is no attachment to attach to.

His prediction for the season is specific and unsentimental. If Belichick does not get to seven wins, Bones thinks he calls it himself, and the school lets him.

Is the novelty gone? Some of it, yes. Some of the shine has come off.

Asked whether this taints the legacy, Bones landed on a phrase he seemed pleased with, describing it as a cute little tainting. He reached for Michael Jordan on the Wizards, and for Brett Favre remaining a great Packer regardless of how it ended.

"Belichick is the greatest coach of all time," he said. "It's just going to take about three years to fully wash it off."

Does any of this suggest it was all Tom Brady?

Bones said no, and inverted it. What it suggests to him is that Brady would not have been Brady without exactly Belichick's coaching style.

He has a source on this. Bones does an NFL podcast with Matt Cassel, who was there under Brady and stepped in when Brady was out, and who talks about that dynamic constantly. Belichick was brutally hard as a coach. Brady took coaching as well as anyone on the roster.

The part that stuck with Bones came from talking to other Patriots through Cassel. Brady was the example, the best player on the team openly accepting the hardest coaching, which made it possible to coach everyone else that way.

Once Brady left, that was gone. And Belichick could not coach them as hard, because nobody was standing there saying they would take it first.

"So I think it was the perfect mix," Bones said. Then, back to the original question: all right, Bill Belichick, we do not care?

That was ruled high register. The compromise reached was that if North Carolina goes on a run, everyone will care.

The follow-up was immediate. They will not go on a run, so nobody will.