North Carolina Tar Heels head coach Bill Belichick is expanding his coaching staff by promoting former offensive analyst and Tarheel legend Natrone Means to become the program’s running backs coach. Means is quite familiar with Chapel Hill, as he played running back for UNC during his collegiate years.
Bill Belichick Promotes Natrone Means to RBs Coach
CBS Sports and 247Sports writer Matt Zenitz reported Belichick’s move to promote Means, who was previously working as a UNC analyst under Mack Brown.
North Carolina is expected to name Natrone Means as its running backs coach, sources tell @insidecarolina and me for @cbssports/@247sports.
The former Tar Heels and NFL Pro Bowl running back was previously an analyst for UNC under Mack Brown. https://t.co/qOetA1iLiU pic.twitter.com/jO4fCAeKp2
— Matt Zenitz (@mzenitz) January 31, 2025
Means has been with UNC as a coach since 2021, when he joined as an offensive analyst. Prior to his time in Chapel Hill, he had only experience with high school teams and smaller colleges.
As a player, the Tarheels running back had a stellar college career, tallying 3,074 yards and 34 touchdowns.
Then, in 1993, the San Diego Chargers drafted him in the second round. Means had a luscious seven-season career in the NFL and even became the youngest player to score a touchdown in NFL history.
For many years now, North Carolina has relied on the running back position to power its offense. Now, Belichick has decided to use Means’ expertise to reinvigorate the dormant rushing attack.
Belichick Wants To Follow in the Footsteps of Alabama’s Nick Saban
Belichick holds the record for most Super Bowl victories as a head coach and has won six times, all of them with the New England Patriots. Now, he’s trying to achieve the same outcome with Tar Heels as well in the 2025 season, and he wants to learn from the best.
Belichick is already making big moves in favor of the college football program and trying to build a team of staff well-suited for the victory.
Moreover, in one of his interviews, Bill Belichick mentioned that he draws inspiration from former Alabama Crimson Tide head coach Nick Saban to build his staff for the 2025 season.
“I appreciate Coach Saban’s comments about the evaluations that we did in Cleveland,” Belichick said on ESPN College GameDay Jan. 31. “I think I learned a lot more from him than he did from me. He’s a great evaluator. And then, I watched him at Alabama put together essentially his scouting and evaluation staff.
“Now, I’m copying a lot of things that I watched him do there and learned from the system that he installed there. It’s been, really, each day, more players come into the portal. As these bowl games are completed, I’m sure there’ll continue to be more.”
Moreover, Belichick also mentioned that he’s looking for talents to recruit, and he believes that players can also benefit greatly from committing to UNC, as the college can also provide them with a great academic facility and a strong football program.
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“We’re on top of each guy — evaluating the players that we think will be coming in, but also some declare that maybe we didn’t expect or you start to hear players that are rumored to come in. We’re digging through all those guys. We have a lot to offer here at Carolina, both academically with this institution and the football program and what we have to offer,” he added.
Belichick wants to build the Tar Heels in a way that they could make a memorable run in 2025.
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