Steve Belichick tries to carve his own path while coaching alongside his famous father at UNC

CHAPEL HILL — Coaching runs in the Belichick family and now that familial coaching line runs directly through Chapel Hill.

Steve Belichick, Bill’s father, coached at UNC in the mid-1950s, when the future NFL coaching legend was just a little kid. Now Bill Belichick, 73, is back in Chapel Hill as the Tar Heels’ head coach and two of his sons, Steve and Brian, are on his first coaching staff.

“That’s something I never tried to push them into,” Bill Belichick said Wednesday. “It’s something they wanted to do. They’ve been around it their whole lives.”

Bill Belichick spent nearly 50 years as an NFL coach and won six Super Bowl titles as head coach of the New England Patriots. It’s not a shock that all three of his children are coaches. His son Steve Belichick is the Tar Heels’ defensive coordinator. Brian Belichick coaches UNC’s defensive backs and safeties. His daughter, Amanda Belichick, is the head coach of the women’s lacrosse team at Holy Cross.

Bill Belichick recounted Wednesday how his sons began their football careers as pre-teens just helping out before graduating to ball boys and then helping break down film for New England Patriots coordinators and eventually earning quality control positions and sitting in on meetings with captains and quarterbacks before eventually moving into assistant coaching roles with the Patriots. He said he learned so much of the game from osmosis, just being around it and picking things up. Steve, his son, said he had a similar experience.

“Just being around the game, being around the guys, going all the way back to my grandpa,” Steve Belichick said Wednesday in his first press event with local media at UNC. “It’s kind of part of the family. My mom always told me I could do something better with my life, but I just kind of fell in love with the game.”

It was Steve who may have helped bring Bill into the college game. Steve left the Patriots after Bill was let go following the 2023 season to become the defensive coordinator at the University of Washington in 2024. Bill spent time with the Huskies’ program throughout the year, helping kindle his interest in the college game.

“I take all the credit for him being in college. That’s all me,” Steve deadpanned, not unlike his father’s dry delivery.

Steve said he didn’t envision his dad coaching in college. But he’s not stunned that he found a way back into the game that’s been in their lives forever.

“He just loves to coach football,” Steve said. “Loves to develop players, loves to be around the game. It’s been that way my whole life and it hasn’t changed yet.”

Steve said the opportunity to reunite with his father and brother in Chapel Hill was too much to pass up. But he added that leaving coach Jedd Fisch and Washington, where he was a coordinator for the first time, was a difficult choice.

“Being with him was important, that wasn’t the only piece of the decision,” said Steve Belichick, who is married and has four children. “I’ve got a family to feed. I’ve got people to provide for. I don’t count on him to do that. I do that myself. I’m a man. It was a tough decision.”

Steve will make $1.3 million in 2025, the highest among UNC assistants, according to the UNC System salary database. His signed contract with North Carolina hasn’t yet been released. Bill Belichick was given a $10-million pool for assistant coach salaries.

Players say Steve and Bill Belichick share an ability to crack jokes. They certainly share a similar voice with the defensive coordinator even offering a quick impression of his dad Wednesday that was spot on.

“I try and take a lot from my dad,” Steve said. “He’s definitely my mentor, my idol. I look up to him in more ways than just football. I’m always trying to take from him, always trying to be a sponge and absorb as much as I can from him in all aspects.”

But Steve Belichick is also trying to carve his own path, create his own identity.

“With all the great coaches that are around this building and places that I worked, it’s taking the things you like that they do and it’s also, I don’t think i can do it like them, let me try and do it my way,” he said. “So ideas, thoughts and try new things. I’m always trying to do that. I’m just my own person. I’m not him. My brother’s not him. Me and my brother aren’t the same.”

That tension was on display in December when Bill Belichick’s girlfriend, Jordon Hudson, who also served as a public relations go-between for him right after his hire, expressed concern that Steve Belichick’s hire wouldn’t be presented in the correct light by the university.

“Though Steve Belichick is in fact Bill’s son, he should be depicted and represented as his own established, credible entity as opposed to an extension of Bill,” Hudson wrote to school officials in an email dated Dec. 22. 

“It can be easily misinterpreted that Steve is simply benefitting from nepotism but that is not the case. Steve was fortunate to have learned defensive football strategy from the ‘greatest defensive mind” of all-time. He has earned his position due to his performance and output.”

She said the school should refrain from using pictures of them together “at least for the time being.”

“It is really worth emphasizing the point that Steve has the experience of being a COLLEGE defensive coordinator and will bring a plethora of knowledge to the coaching staff,” Hudson wrote in December. 

Under Steve Belichick, Washington’s defense improved in terms of yards allowed per game. In 2024, Washington ranked No. 28 in total defense (328.4 yards per game) and No. 53 in scoring defense (23.7 points per game) in 2024. 

In 2023, the Huskies ranked No. 96 in total defense (406.7 yards per game) and No. 54 in scoring defense (24.8 points per game). Washington went 14-1 and reached the national title game that year.

Bill Belichick said that Steve Belichick called defenses in New England from 2020, even though he didn’t have the coordinator title. 

“I’ve had a lot of confidence in him doing that,” Bill Belichick said. “I think he’s done a great job of preparing the defenses and then also having a good feel for play calling and when to call things. It’s not just what the defense is, it’s kind of the timing of when to call it, how to set things up. He does a really good job of taking input, as Brian does, from the players. If they’re not confident in it and they’re not comfortable in it, then we probably don’t want to run it. Let’s find something else that we all feel good about and let’s work to get the things we don’t feel good about right before we run it.”

Four players who played at Washington last season, including three defensive players, transferred to North Carolina in the offseason after the Belichicks were hired. Defensive back Thaddeus Dixon and linebacker Khmori House are expected to be top contributors.  UNC defensive backs are being coached by all three Belichicks. 

Brian signed a two-year deal worth $1.1 million total, according to his contract, which states that he, unlike other assistant coaches who report directly to Bill, reports “directly to the director of athletics, who will be responsible for supervision and oversight of your work.” That is to comply with the university’s nepotism policy.

“Steve is a great coach,” UNC defensive back Marcus Allen said. “He has a lot of experience, like NFL experience. He was at Washington. He knows what position we need to be in. He knows the best position to put us in to win. And then Brian, he’s a mastermind. He knows everything that’s going on with defense. Just having them two together is really allowing us to be a better defense.”