Watch: Packers’ Jeff Hafley on Bill Belichick Taking North Carolina Job

The Packers’ Jeff Hafley left college to join the Packers. Legendary coach Bill Belichick left the NFL to lead North Carolina.
North Carolina Tar Heels coach Bill Belichick holds up the sweatshirt worn by his father when he was an assistant coach.
North Carolina Tar Heels coach Bill Belichick holds up the sweatshirt worn by his father when he was an assistant coach. / Jim Dedmon-Imagn Images
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GREEN BAY, Wis. – This year, Jeff Hafley resigned as head coach at Boston College to become defensive coordinator of the Green Bay Packers.

On Thursday, legendary NFL coach Bill Belichick took the opposite approach.

Rather than dive into this offseason’s NFL hiring cycle, he took over as head coach at North Carolina.

Belichick won six Super Bowls as coach of the Patriots. He and the team parted ways after the 2023 season. Even with an NFL-record 11 consecutive playoff appearances on his resume, he got only one interview – with the Atlanta Falcons – last year.

“He’ll do a great job,” Hafley said. “That’s a great university and obviously he’s one of the best.”

Hafley had grown weary of the new NCAA landscape and wanted to focus on being a football coach.

Belichick, the ultimate grinder of a coach, chose to dive into that world with the Tar Heels, who haven’t had a 10-win season since 2015 or finished in the Top 10 since 1997.

“I always wanted to coach in college football,” Belichick said before joking, “it just never really worked out. I had some pretty good years in the NFL, so that was OK. This is really kind of a dream come true. I grew up in college football with my dad as a coach at Navy for 50 years, so as a kid all I really knew was college football. It's great to come back home to Carolina and back in an environment I really grew up in.”

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Bill Huber
BILL HUBER

Bill Huber, who has covered the Green Bay Packers since 2008, is the publisher of Packers On SI, a Sports Illustrated channel. E-mail: packwriter2002@yahoo.com History: Huber took over Packer Central in August 2019. Twitter: https://twitter.com/BillHuberNFL Background: Huber graduated from the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater, where he played on the football team, in 1995. He worked in newspapers in Reedsburg, Wisconsin Dells and Shawano before working at The Green Bay News-Chronicle and Green Bay Press-Gazette from 1998 through 2008. With The News-Chronicle, he won several awards for his commentaries and page design. In 2008, he took over as editor of Packer Report Magazine, which was founded by Hall of Fame linebacker Ray Nitschke, and PackerReport.com. In 2019, he took over the new Sports Illustrated site Packer Central, which he has grown into one of the largest sites in the Sports Illustrated Media Group.