It is an early Thursday morning and Michael Lombardi is targeted on breaking down tight finish tape. 

He is aware of what his boss, Invoice Belichick, needs on the place however it’s nonetheless an arduous problem. The previous NFL basic supervisor has been breaking down tape for greater than 40 years however there are significantly extra prospects to guage at the highschool degree than what NFL personnel of us like Lombardi handled for NFL Draft preparation. That is a blessing and a curse. 

Later that day, he’ll seem on the favored Pat McAfee Present on ESPN. Lombardi is billed as a “Progrum Paisan” on McAfee’s eponymous present and it has been a profitable partnership for either side. Lombardi has used McAfee’s massive pulpit to dispute false experiences about Belichick, discuss their efforts to construct UNC soccer and faucet into his NFL experience to debate sizzling button league-wide subjects. 

Publicly, Lombardi has lengthy been Belichick’s greatest defender, utilizing his expertise working with the eight-time Tremendous Bowl winner at a number of spots to offer a peek behind the scenes on the success and motivations behind the NFL’s biggest coach. After final working within the NFL with Belichick and the New England Patriots in 2016, Lombardi leaned into constructing a media profession, writing books, working with VSiN and The Ringer and regularly showing on Ringer founder Invoice Simmons’ podcast. 

Lombardi hadn’t labored in school soccer in 40 years when Belichick made him his first rent in December after stunning the soccer world and changing into the College of North Carolina head soccer coach. His official title is basic supervisor, a becoming one given his NFL expertise, however he wears a variety of hats as a Belichick-run UNC program will get up and working within the face of trade skepticism that it’ll succeed.

“I’ve such nice respect for the way in which he works and his imaginative and prescient, and I am aligned with it so it is easy to work throughout the framework,” Lombardi informed CBS Sports activities. “I’ve stated this many instances…I am not a superb personnel man for a coach I do not consider in philosophically. However once I do with Coach Belichick, I really feel like I generally is a good productive personnel man.”

“The key to any profitable group is the power to anticipate issues, not react” — Al Davis

In school soccer’s most fascinating story in 2025, Lombardi is the consigliere to its most fascinating coach. The New Jersey native is understood for quoting “The Sopranos”, and because you’re absolutely questioning, he is keen on Silvio Dante over “The Godfather’s” Tom Hagen for the sort of adviser he tries to be to the hoodie Don. 

“I feel Sil was proper — he needed to remain within the highlight, I feel he loved it,” Lombardi defined. “I feel he was prepared to inform Tony what he wanted to listen to. Might be demanding if he needed to be, however nonetheless was a pragmatist. It’s important to have a look at this example, determine an answer. I feel that is what Sil did.”

And that is who Lombardi is in some ways, in line with pal and former boss Brian Musburger, who known as him the “final soccer consigliere.” 

“I do suppose he is a war-time consigliere and somebody you’d like to have with you in a foxhole,” Musburger stated. “Below stress, he is measured and able to assessing the large image in a choice.” 

The Sopranos, although, is simply the tip of the iceberg of his cultural and literary references he relates again to soccer. Virtually each state of affairs or query reminds him of a well-known quote or a motto he is used to information his strategy. In a single dialog with a reporter, he pinballs from quoting Cuban poet Jose Marti to former Raiders proprietor Al Davis to legendary songwriter Neil Simon. He is as outfitted to debate the brilliance of Belichick’s roster building as he’s Billy Bob Thornton’s appearing on “Landman.” 

Musburger, the co-founder and present president of VSiN, remembers consuming pizza with Lombardi one evening at Pizzeria Bianco, a Phoenix-based restaurant picked by Eater and USA As we speak as the most effective pizza in America and featured on Netflix’s “Chef’s Desk.” Lombardi was fascinated with how a pizzeria in Arizona may presumably have the most effective pizza and needed to expertise it and break it down like solely he can. As a part of a dialogue round meals, Lombardi began extolling the values of an EVO hibachi grill he had at his home. 

“We spent the entire time speaking grilling methods,” the VSiN co-founder stated. “He impressed me to revamp my yard and set up it.” 

It is experiences like that that join Lombardi with a legendary basketball coach in Musburger’s thoughts. Earlier than VSiN, Musburger and his father, Todd, lengthy represented Phil Jackson, the architect of two of the NBA’s biggest trendy dynasties. Having spent appreciable time round each, in skilled and private settings, Brian sees actual similarities between the 2. 

“On the planet of sports activities lots of these guys could be one-dimensional and solely able to speaking about X’s and O’s of their respective sports activities however Phil and Michael usually are not,” Musburger stated. “They’re renaissance males, they’ve an mental curiosity that makes them nice leaders and nice strategists and thinkers.” 

“Youth is just not a time of life; it’s a way of thinking; . . . a vigor of the feelings; it’s the freshness of the deep springs of life.” – Samuel Ullman

Corridor of Fame NFL coach Invoice Parcells gave Lombardi that poem from the Birmingham, Alabama native who labored as a pharmacist. The poem “Youth,” a favourite of former American basic Douglas MacArthur, is how the 65-year-old Lombardi tries to reside his life. 

It is a useful mantra understanding what he simply signed up for. As distinguished school soccer and school basketball coaches like Nick Saban, Jay Wright and Tony Bennett head for the exits, Belichick and Lombardi have executed the alternative. With little school expertise for both — Lombardi final labored in school at UNLV in 1984; Belichick by no means has although his father, Steve, was a university soccer lifer — they noticed the sport evolve sufficient to consider their ability units had been effectively suited on a college campus. As school coaches regularly bemoan what the sport has turn out to be, from the impression of Identify, Picture and Likeness to the switch portal creating free company, the North Carolina mind belief noticed alternative. 

“We have lived this life,” Lombardi stated. “In equity for these different coaches, they by no means actually have. We have lived this life the place the locker room is a enterprise workplace, not a locker room. To not say it offers us a bonus however it offers us a data of what is the terrain. 

“We used to say this on the Raiders on a regular basis, ‘The jungle is rarely harmful if you understand the paths.’ We all know these trails.”

Rick Venturi was with Lombardi and Belichick after they actually discovered these trails. The 12 months was 1994 and Belichick was in his first stint as an NFL head coach, with the Cleveland Browns. He had missed the NFL playoffs his first three years, organising a important fourth 12 months to interrupt by way of and make the playoffs. Belichick assembled a training employees that included future school head coaches Nick Saban, Kirk Ferentz and Pat Hill. Lombardi had moved right into a distinguished director of participant personnel position, working his method up the group after beginning as a scout in 1987. 

Venturi, the Browns’ defensive backs coach that 12 months, noticed the bond develop between Belichick and Lombardi. There wasn’t a single a-ha second in a season that resulted in Belichick’s first playoff look as a head coach, however over time Venturi observed how a lot the relentless head coach believed in Lombardi’s skills. For the notoriously curmudgeonly Belichick, that perception is earned, not given. 

“I feel there’s a real respect and that is not straightforward with Invoice,” Venturi stated. “It’s important to be fairly particular for him to offer you that sort of belief and respect that he has for Mike.”

Venturi says that respect comes from Belichick believing Lombardi is aware of what he is speaking about. Whereas the common fan may greatest know Lombardi for dropping a superb, exhausting tackle VSiN or McAfee reveals, Venturi continues to be blown away by the UNC basic supervisor’s soccer data. Lombardi will all the time be most related to Belichick however he labored for six totally different NFL franchises, together with beginning his profession as a scout for the San Francisco 49ers below legendary coach Invoice Walsh. His longest stint anyplace was truly working for Al Davis in Oakland as a senior personnel govt from 1998-2006, serving to lead the Raiders to the Tremendous Bowl in 2003. 

Venturi spent a lifetime in soccer, working as a defensive coordinator with the Browns, Indianapolis Colts and New Orleans Saints, amongst different stops, and may inform when a man is for actual or not. Similar with Belichick. 

And Lombardi, he says, could be very a lot for actual. 

“I all the time say there’s snorkelers and deep sea divers and lots of guys in that GM place can discuss a bit of little bit of soccer however it’s actually a floor data, it is a snorkel data,” he stated. “Mike is an in-depth soccer man so there would not should be any translation. He is aware of precisely what Invoice wants, he is aware of precisely what Invoice needs in gamers. He is aware of what it takes, each athletically and mentally, to play in a Belichick system.” 

Says Lombardi of why he and Belichick work so effectively collectively, “Each our personalities are related in that we consider that there isn’t any shortcut. Each wish to win and do not care who will get the credit score.”

“To enhance is to alter, to be good is to alter typically” – Winston Churchill 

The NFL generally is a brutal enterprise. In simply this 12 months alone, two NFL head coaches had been fired after solely a single 12 months together with Jerod Mayo, Belichick’s substitute guiding the New England Patriots. Getting fired is basically a matter of when, not if, even for future Corridor of Fame coaches like Belichick and Pete Carroll. 

Lombardi has lived it. He bought his massive shot to be an NFL basic supervisor in 2013 with the Cleveland Browns in a construction that included Joe Banner in a CEO position. However Browns proprietor Jimmy Haslam dumped Lombardi and Banner after solely 13 months of them working collectively. Lombardi resurfaced the following 12 months working with Belichick as a particular assistant to the pinnacle coach for 2 seasons and that was it. 

He had to determine what the following stage of his life would seem like. After a lifetime of soccer, he felt he had one thing essential sufficient to say to write down a ebook. The end result was “Gridiron Genius: A Masterclass in Constructing Groups and Profitable on the Highest Degree,” detailing Lombardi’s expertise with mentors Belichick and Invoice Walsh and his soccer philosophies. It detailed guys that pressured him to alter his thoughts about them (Malcolm Butler, Doug Pederson), supplied takeaways that appear more likely to be utilized at UNC (“System over stars” and “You are by no means executed getting higher”) and labored in references to motion pictures like “The Standard Suspects” to elucidate Belichick’s 3-4 Cowl 2 protection. 

Seven years after its publication, you may nonetheless hear the satisfaction in Lombardi’s voice speaking in regards to the ebook, in some ways the crown jewel of his soccer accomplishments that embrace three Tremendous Bowl rings. 

“I feel whenever you’ve been within the NFL so long as I’ve, and you have had your ups and downs, you find yourself changing into considerably of a bitter individual, or, jaded, if you’ll,” Lombardi stated. “Writing ‘Gridiron Genius’ allowed me, to cite the nice Don Henley, ‘to permit the forgiveness of myself, to discover into one other world.’ I feel that eliminated any of the doubt that I had. From a life standpoint, probably the most rewarding instances of my life. It was sort of like going to remedy with out going to remedy.” 

“Get your data from trying, not speaking” – Pink Auerbach

When UNC employed Belichick on Dec. 11, the early signing interval and winter switch portal window had been already in swing. As Belichick labored to construct out his teaching employees and Lombardi the personnel employees, they raced towards the clock so as to add gamers to the 2025 roster. 

There have been some early challenges, particularly how a lot preexisting relationships they did not have mattered in portal recruiting. They pulled out some massive relationships often, akin to having former Patriots Tom Brady and Rob Gronkowski attain out to portal quarterback goal John Mateer, however they largely opted to construct out a roster within the “Patriot Mantra.” 

Within the switch portal, North Carolina centered on gamers they knew (4 gamers from Washington the place defensive coordinator Steve Belichick spent final season) and low-rated smaller college gamers from locations like Prairie View A&M and Holy Cross. There wasn’t an enormous splashy portal addition however with restricted employees and no time to attend, the Tar Heels nonetheless signed 247Sports’ No. 14 ranked switch portal class, led by Washington cornerback Thaddeus Dixon, UConn defensive lineman Pryce Yates and Troy offensive sort out Daniel King. 

“We did not have a construct up interval to sort of research and put together for the check,” Lombardi stated. “We’re taking the check right here proper in the midst of it.”

Invoice Belichick offers North Carolina previous school strive: Inside Tremendous Bowl-winning coach’s stunning profession change

Jonathan Jones

In highschool recruiting, they flipped recruits from East Carolina, Navy and Temple down the stretch. They bought their NFL expertise — one recruit informed 247Sports the employees had swayed him on UNC being just like the thirty third NFL workforce — and talent to develop gamers for the following degree. They relied on their many years of scouting expertise and data of what is labored up to now with what they wish to accomplish.

“Mike is aware of that if he likes a participant that they wish to recruit and the child might have a deficiency in a single space or one other, he is aware of Invoice can shut that hole,” stated Venturi who skilled it firsthand with the duo in Cleveland. 

The job is simply starting for Lombardi and the remainder of the UNC teaching employees. The craziest interval has ended however spring observe will probably be right here quickly and whereas it’s sometimes lighter on obtainable impression gamers, it offers UNC one other alternative to improve the roster within the spring switch portal window. From there comes the self-evaluation on whether or not the roster Belichick and Lombardi put collectively on the fly fared in addition to anticipated in what must be probably the most fascinating program to comply with within the 2025 season.

Close to the tip of a latest name with a reporter, Lombardi was requested whether or not there was a ebook or film he would use to information him in his first season again in school soccer in 40 years. The creator of two books pauses for couple seconds after which comes up with the unofficial sherpas to this 12 months: Jim Collins’ “Good to Nice” and Owen Eastwood’s “Belonging.”

“That is finally what we’re attempting to do,” he says. “We’re attempting to create a brand new household right here at Carolina, create a way of belonging with all people. And we’re attempting to go from good to nice.” 

MORE: Meet North Carolina’s spring signees as North Carolina finalizes 2025 soccer roster