North Carolina, under Bill Belichick, fancies itself the NFL’s 33rd team. The better description is the NCAA’s equivalent of Belichick’s Patriots.
Without, to date, the winning.
Former UNC quarterback Gio Lopez, who played for Belichick in his first year as a college coach, has transferred to Wake Forest. To hear it from Lopez, it sounds less like a transfer and more like an escape.
“Back at the other school, it felt like there’s no air,” Lopez recently said, via Logan Lazarczyk of SI.com. “Here, it’s fun again. They’re moving us in the right direction, energized, and guys are enjoying football. It’s like fresh air. I’d never had to respond to tough situations like that on that loud of a scale.”
What was the biggest difference about playing football under Belichick?
“It was more like work,” Lopez said. “After that first game, it felt like getting through the day. You don’t want to live like that, where you’re up at night thinking about the next day.”
Gio Lopez’s father, Barney Lopez, has offered more specific commentary regarding the manner in which the team was run. And regarding the feedback Gio received in real time.
“You were ridiculed if you didn’t do it exactly the way he was told,” Barney Lopez said. “You could be at the dang line, see the play is about to be blown up, but if you try to call it off or audible, you were ridiculed.”
The end result was that Gio Lopez no longer enjoyed playing.
“Gio has always loved the game of football, and he was losing the love for it when he was over there [at North Carolina],” Barney Lopez said.
Gio Lopez started 11 games in 2025, his first and only season at North Carolina. It will be interesting to see what Belichick and/or G.M. Mike Lombardi will have to say about Lopez’s comments.
Our guess is that Belichick would grumble something unintelligible before saying he’s only focused on the guys who are on the team. Lombardi possibly would find a way to throw shade at Lopez indirectly, saying something about how NFL-style football isn’t for everyone and some guys respond the right way to coaching from the greatest coach of all time and others respond a different way.
And then Lombardi would probably try to find a way to blame it all on the media.
Here’s the key. Belichick’s methods work if he wins. Because winning validates a coach’s approach. Players who complain about how a coach goes about coaching a team into becoming a winning program come off as whiners, whatever the techniques.
When a team underachieves, the feedback from the players helps explain why things went sideways.
Ultimately, it comes down to whether Belichick and Lombardi will be able to recruit enough good players to Chapel Hill. Without good players, no college program has a chance to compete at a high level.
But an important question will remain, regardless of the quality of the roster. Do Belichick’s methods work on college-aged players? Could the Patriot Way at the NCAA level make a potentially good team worse, or better?
College football players have more power and freedom than ever. They no longer have to tolerate an emotionless taskmaster. And, for those who eventually make it to the NFL, they can worry about it feeling like a job later. Kids who are 18, 19, and 20 prefer to behave accordingly, at least some of the time.
For now, all we know is what has transpired. Belichick’s first season at North Carolina fell far short of expectations. Even with 2025 lowering the bar for 2026, Belichick will have plenty of work to do in order to stick around for a third year.
It may not be “inevitable” that the NFL will expand the regular season to 18 games. It is inevitable that the NFL will try.
Patriots owner Robert Kraft has spoken about an 18-game season, with 16 international games annually, on multiple occasions in recent months. He’s quoted in a new Vanity Fair profile of Commissioner Roger Goodell as expressing a clear desire to expand the season, and the slate of non-U.S. games.
“In our new labor agreement, I hope we go to 18 games and two preseason games, and then if we do that, it would allow us to hopefully go to 16 international games, so we would have every team every year play an international game, which would be built mainly through a streaming audience,” Kraft told Lachlan Cartwright of Vanity Fair.
The question is when a new labor agreement will be finalized. If the current one expires in March 2031, the NFL will possibly (if not likely) lock out the players until they agree to the adjustment to the season.
That makes it arguably prudent for the players to agree to 18 games sooner than later, especially because each season that includes an 18th game will result in more revenue — especially if a second bye extends the regular season to 20 weeks and adds 10 more total broadcast windows.
Until the NFL selects a firm date for Super Bowl LXII in Atlanta, the door remains open for an 18th game by 2027. That may not be easy to accomplish, but the league has yet to throw in the towel. If it had, the Atlanta Super Bowl would have been locked in for February 13, 2028, the obvious date for the game under the current format of 17 games and one bye.
A two-day trial ended with a not guilty verdict as to strangulation and assault charges against free-agent receiver Stefon Diggs.
After the case ended, his lawyers, Mitch Schuster, issued a statement.
“We have taken these allegations seriously from day one and that’s exactly why we were eager for the facts to come to light through the legal process,” Schuster said, in a statement distributed to PFT and other outlets. “Fame and financial success shouldn’t strip someone of their presumption of innocence, but too often, it does exactly that. And unfortunately, as is the case with unfounded claims — the damage starts the moment an accusation is filed, long before any facts are examined.
“Professional athletes have a target on their back. When someone sees a uniform and a contract, they see leverage; they see a settlement. And they’re counting on that pressure in the court of public opinion to drive a default decision to settle regardless of the facts of the matter. The evidence has shown what we’ve maintained from day one: Mr. Diggs was wrongly accused, and this case represents exactly the kind of opportunistic targeting that players can face the moment they step off the field.”
The problem as to the claims made by Mila Adams, who worked as a live-in chef for Diggs, was that she had no corroboration as to her claims. Also, her behavior in the days after the alleged incident did not seem to be consistent with the actions someone who had experienced the trauma of being slapped and choked.
Adams did herself no favors by the manner in which she answered questions regarding other details in the case, to the point at which the judge warned Adams that her entire testimony “may be stricken.” The prosecutor acknowledged during closing argument that she was not a perfect witness.
Frankly, the prosecutor shouldn’t have taken the case to trial. There’s very broad discretion in such matters; most prosecutors only pursue cases they know they will win.
In this case, the prosecutor either failed to test the allegations via an aggressive evaluation of the case, or the prosecutor made a bad decision based on the information obtained during the investigation phase.
A Massachusetts jury has found free agent wide receiver Stefon Diggs not guilty of strangulation and assault and battery charges, according to multiple reports.
Deliberations lasted roughly 90 minutes, with the jury briefly returning to the courtroom to ask Judge Jeanmarie Carroll a question, before delivering a not guilty verdict on both counts. The trial lasted two days, wrapping up Tuesday.
Diggs’ former live-in chef, Jamila “Mila” Adams, testified that the NFL player slapped and choked her during a Dec. 2 argument at his house. Diggs, who pleaded not guilty, was in the Dedham District Court for the reading of the verdict.
Defense attorney Andrew Kettlewell said during closing arguments that prosecutors had not presented “a single shred of credible evidence” that an assault occurred.
The defense had pointed to financial demands Adams made, raising questions about whether the dispute was about an alleged assault or money.
During cross-examination, Adams would not answer questions about financial demands made on her behalf.
“There was no assault, no strangulation, no incident at all on that day or any other day,” Kettlewell said, via the Associated Press.
Free-agent receiver Stefon Diggs currently stands trial on a felony strangulation charge and a misdemeanor charge of assault. He decided not to take the witness stand to rebut the allegations of the alleged victim, Mila Adams.
Under the American system of justice, criminal defendants have a constitutional right to not testify, with the burden resting on the prosecution to prove guilty beyond a reasonable doubt with other evidence.
Although Adams told an objectively compelling story regarding the alleged assault, the rest of the evidence arguably undermined her claim.
For starters, there was no physical evidence of any injury. No photos taken at the time of the alleged incident, no apparent injuries when she reported the incident to police.
Also, her behavior after the alleged incident, as explained by other witnesses who interacted with her, was inconsistent with the reasonable aftermath of an assault.
Diggs’s lawyers attempted during closing argument to show that her contention regarding an alleged assault was simply not credible.
As of this posting, the judge is instructing the jury on the law that applies to the case. The jury will then begin to deliberate on a verdict.
