‘I feel like I have everything in front of me’: Inside the $765 million marriage of Juan Soto and the Mets
IN THE BACKYARD of his 11,540-square-foot Beverly Hills mansion, next to the saltwater pool with an underwater sound system, Steve Cohen was talking about building things. Trying to construct something great nearly broke him once. The hedge fund Cohen founded made him one of the richest men in the world, and insider trading from two employees led to a $1.8 billion fine and the dissolution of the business. Cohen was being transparent, more than someone in his position might otherwise, because he wanted the man sitting next to him to understand that work ethic and drive and sacrifice and the pursuit of excellence are building blocks for something bigger, something that lasts — something that can change lives. As he locked eyes with Juan Soto, who stared back at him, rapt, Cohen posed a question.
“What are your aspirations?”
Soto paused to think. He had made a career out of careful consideration. No baseball player in his generation, and scant few before him, wielded such immaculate control over his own decision-making skills. From the time he debuted at 19 years old, Soto had launched himself on a trajectory toward the Hall of Fame in large part because of his mastery of the strike zone. He has the ability to process information so fast that to him the half-second between the time a pitcher releases the ball and when it pops into the catcher’s mitt feels like an eternity. It carried Soto out of Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic, and all the way here, to California’s 90210 ZIP code, where Cohen, the wealthiest owner in baseball, was trying to convince him to sign with the New York Mets.
The answer was multipronged. Soto wanted to win championships, plural, and he wanted to win a Gold Glove in the outfield, and he wanted to do a million other things, because he wasn’t in the business of restricting himself. What he said next aligned with that.
“I want to be the best hitter of all time,” Soto said.
More than 17,500 players have stepped into a major league batter’s box. Soto’s suggestion that he wanted to stand atop that list took hubris, but Cohen gleaned something else from Soto’s words. He saw a kindred spirit, a perfect embodiment of what he wanted his Mets to be. The franchise had spent most of its 64-year existence bumbling along, while the New York Yankees, for whom Soto played in 2024, won championship after championship. Now, Cohen believes the Mets have finally replaced decades of amateur-hour mismanagement with a functional group of leaders — and created a franchise that any free agent would choose over the 29 other clubs. Particularly a 26-year-old in search of his forever home.
Cohen sat at the head of the outdoor table, flanked by Soto to his left and the Mets’ new president of baseball operations, David Stearns, to his right. Soto’s agent, Scott Boras, sat next to him and across from Alex Cohen, Steve’s wife. Her father, 93-year-old Ralph Garcia, a Mets fan for decades, showed up to the meeting, as did Cohen’s son, Josh. The attendees reinforced a point Cohen wanted to emphasize: The Mets might function around the principles embodied by Cohen’s hedge funds, but at its heart, theirs is a family business. For hours they talked, enjoying Dominican food, making sure that this seemingly perfect match of team and player was as substantive in person as it was in the computer models that suggested Cohen spend more money to secure Soto’s services than had ever been guaranteed to a professional athlete.
For the entirety of Cohen’s adult life, he had assessed the value of financial products and leveraged them to inconceivable riches. This deal was value anthropomorphized, an opportunity for something bigger, lasting, life-changing — delivering a moment decades in the making for Ralph and the other Mets diehards and all of Queens. And Cohen intended to finish the meeting with a flourish. He told the group to follow him to the theater room downstairs.
On the way, Cohen told a story. He is one of the world’s great art collectors, and one piece in particular enraptured him: Picasso’s Le Rêve. Las Vegas casino magnate Steve Wynn owned it, and Cohen had agreed to purchase it in 2006 for $139 million. Then Wynn accidentally elbowed a hole through it, scuttling the sale. One restoration and seven years later, Cohen bought the piece for $155 million.
The point, Cohen said, was that when he sees something he wants, nothing will stop him from getting it. With that, the lights in the theater dimmed, and a video started to play. Josh Cohen had devised it. Soto in a Mets uniform. Soto at Citi Field. And at the end, next to the statue of Tom Seaver that adorns the outside of Citi Field, a large, bronze version of Soto. He could stay with the Yankees or go to Los Angeles or Boston or Toronto, sure, but nowhere, Cohen said, would he change the arc of baseball history like he would with the Mets.
TWO MONTHS AFTER signing the largest contract in the history of professional sports, a tectonic 15-year, $765 million deal with no deferred money, Juan Soto was ready to report to New York Mets spring training. And he was nervous. His jitters were more the first-day-of-school variety than anything, but in the time between when he agreed to the deal and mid-February, Soto considered the gravity of what he soon would undertake. His career was his most valuable possession, and he was entrusting it in an organization that for its six-plus decades of existence earned a reputation for brokenness.
“I feel like I have everything in front of me,” Soto said. “I just gotta put the work in and do what I have to do. It’s going to take a lot, but I think when you put the bar that high and you put your goals in a big spot, it brings the best out of you, and that’s what I want to bring every day.”
What for most of baseball history would have seemed inconceivable was now a reality: a future Hall of Famer in the prime of his career fleeing the Bronx for Queens. For the better part of a century, Yankee Stadium had functioned as baseball mecca, the place where the best players found the best of themselves. From 1921 to 2009, they won the American League pennant nearly half the time and captured 27 World Series championships, more than twice as many as the next-best franchise. The baseball universe orbited around East 161st Street and River Avenue.
The Mets weren’t just little brother; they were the distant step-cousin. They didn’t spend like the Yankees. They didn’t develop like the Yankees. The Yankees’ brand was greatness, the Mets’ dysfunction. Even when they cobbled together a championship-caliber core in the 1980s, the Mets’ reign stopped at one championship, in 1986, dreams of a dynasty dashed. Little changed until Cohen, who grew up in Great Neck, about 10 miles from Citi Field, arrived. He saw the Mets not only as an undervalued asset but a loom that could weave the social fabric of Queens and regions beyond. And for all the money he planned to spend to make that happen, the Mets needed an anchor, a face, a defining character for the franchise’s defining era.
Though plenty of talented baseball players have plied their trade for the Mets, none has matched Soto’s luminescence. He is coming off the best year of his career, hitting .288/.419/.569 with 41 home runs. His lifetime on-base percentage of .421 is 13th among all players with at least 2,000 plate appearances in the modern era, sandwiched between Shoeless Joe Jackson and Mickey Mantle. And at 26, plenty of prime years remain for Soto to help reinvent the Mets in his image — on-field alphas, shuffling in the batter’s box, staring down pitchers — saying they’re the ones who own New York now without needing to open their mouths.
On that first day, all Soto wanted to do was fit in. His first seven years in the major leagues were unlike those of any player of his caliber in the game’s history. Superstars rarely get traded before they reach free agency; none moves more than once. Soto had gone from Washington, which signed him as a gangly 16-year-old, to San Diego, which regarded him as the missing piece to winning its first championship, to the Bronx, where the Yankees paired him with Aaron Judge to fashion a fearsome duo in the image of Ruth and Gehrig, Mantle and Maris.
Soto pulled in to Port St. Lucie, Florida, with no specific plan to ingratiate himself. Mets manager Carlos Mendoza, who had been hired before their surprising National League Championship Series run last year after 15 years managing and coaching with the Yankees, encouraged Soto to ignore the fact that he’d now be viewed through a different lens than the previous half-decade. Though his talent had always set Soto apart, now he was the $765 million man, and even if the money would not change him, it would alter the perception of him.
“I just bring myself. This is who I am. I hope you guys like it,” Soto said. “I’m going to try my best. If not, I’m going to make adjustments. That’s what I did. I didn’t have any strategy. ‘Oh, I’m going to do this, I’m going to do that.’ I don’t want to change anything. This is who I am, and this is the guy you’re going to see for the next 15 years.
“I don’t want to try to do more. I don’t want to try to be a superhero. I’m just going to be the same guy I’ve been.”
Whatever Soto does or doesn’t want to try to be, he’s wise enough to recognize that to Mets fans he’s Superman, Batman and Captain America amalgamated. Once he arrived at camp, fans started showing up in droves — thousands on the backfields, plenty wearing Soto’s No. 22, craving just a peek at the one prophesied to liberate them from the shackles of their history. Being a Mets fan is a lesson in second-class citizenry, and with Soto in the fold, it mattered not that their presumed Opening Day starter, Sean Manaea, would miss the beginning of the season, or that another free agent signing, right-hander Frankie Montas, would be out for two months with a lat strain. Soto’s presence alone made the sun shine a little brighter, the bat crack a little louder, the loaded NL East — with Atlanta and Philadelphia teams also harboring World Series aspirations — a little less intimidating.
“At the beginning, I didn’t know what to expect, especially with Soto,” Mendoza said. “That was the biggest thing for me: the guy that’s been around a lot of different teams, but he’s making that transition to another New York team with a huge contract. So how is that going to go here? And I think it was Day 2 of position players [reporting]. I saw him joking around, smiling, laughing. I was like, ‘OK, I think we’re good here.'”
Soto made clear to Mendoza that the size of his contract would be no impediment to him fulfilling all of the goals he told Cohen. “He wants to be held accountable,” Mendoza said, and if that meant getting on him about his defense or baserunning or being a good teammate or even his hitting, he expected the same treatment as someone making $765,000.
Earlier this spring, the Mets set up an optional bunting station that hitters could visit to work on their technique. Perhaps no one should have been surprised that Soto ambled over and spent 15 minutes there. He is an excellent bunter who stole four hits last year pushing the ball away from shifted fielders. But a number of people in the Mets organization were nevertheless pleasantly surprised: If the highest-paid player in sports history can work on rarely used fundamentals, what is anyone else’s excuse to skip the bunting station?
Divas can poison cultures, and the shift in the Mets’ since Cohen bought the team — the hiring of Stearns, who made the playoffs in five of eight years as general manager for the payroll-challenged Milwaukee Brewers, and the immediate success of Mendoza, a first-time big league manager — is fundamental to the Mets’ reimagination. Without a solid foundation, a team filled with nine-figure players would be susceptible to wobble. Organizational sturdiness can help make the complicated seamless.
“We saw it last year with the Dodgers getting Shohei,” said Manaea, who played with Soto in 2022 with San Diego and witnessed firsthand last year how adding one of the best players in baseball can take an already good team and turn it into something special. Los Angeles blitzed the Mets in the NLCS, with Shohei Ohtani, the Dodgers’ $700 million free agent signing, getting on base 17 times in six games and blasting a pair of home runs. What Ohtani is to the Dodgers, Soto can be for the Mets. And his desire for that — for everything baseball has to offer — helped guide him toward that ultimate decision.
JUST BEFORE THANKSGIVING, Soto wrapped up his in-person meetings with the five teams courting him and started to confer with his family, Boras and Boras’ lieutenants. Quickly, he realized he had absolutely no idea where he wanted to spend the remainder of his career. He was most impressed by the Mets’ meeting. The Blue Jays wowed him as well. The Red Sox’s cadre of prospects foretold a bright future. The Dodgers were the industry standard. And he loved playing for the Yankees, whose fans had spent much of the season and October rhythmically chanting “Re-sign So-to,” a clarion call for owner Hal Steinbrenner to channel the energy of his late father, George, and treat the team less as a business and more as a win-at-all-costs championship factory.
“It was a lot of meetings, a lot of back and forth looking at the teams,” Soto said. “What is going to be the best? Who’s going to be at the top for the next 15 years? Who’s going to be willing to spend money after five, six, seven, 10 years?”
The pressure was understandable. Soto had been barreling toward this moment for years. He turned down three contract-extension offers from the Nationals — the first for $100 million-plus, the second a near-facsimile of Fernando Tatis Jr.’s $340 million deal with San Diego and the final a 14-year, $440 million offer that would have made him at the time the highest-paid player in baseball history at 23 years old. He vowed to prioritize fit over money, not because he didn’t care about the economics of the deal but because Boras assured him that eventually the bidding would reach levels never before seen in sports.
At the center of the fit was family — literally, with his parents and siblings deeply involved in his decision, and colloquially, with the length of his expected deal tantamount to a marriage. Soto was raised in a household, said his younger brother, Elian, where they were taught to “be respectful and be nice to everyone — to the game, to the coaches, to our teammates. And try to be as positive as we can on and off the field.”
Cohen’s bet on involving his family in the meeting proved spot-on. Soto saw Cohen not only as a billionaire who was willing to devote the necessary resources to building a team to compete with Los Angeles, but as a husband with the means to give his father-in-law the gift of winning. As much as Soto liked the Dodgers, they were the one team unwilling to match the others financially, with Ohtani’s contract already on their books. As engaging as the Blue Jays were in their meeting — with a video nearly as resonant as the Mets’ and the presence of Edward Rogers, the team owner who never before had involved himself in these sorts of summits — their farm system lagged far enough behind that he eliminated them. And though Boston expressed a willingness to go well beyond $765 million, the Red Sox never made a formal offer in that range, and Soto removed them from the proceedings, too. The biggest free agent contract in MLB history was officially a battle between the two New York teams.
Among the pros for the Mets: Soto believed he could create something bigger, something that lasts, something that would change lives and legacies. For the Yankees: He had grown weary of baseball nomadism, and the Yankees, for all of the consternation among a fan base aggrieved by the lack of championships since 2009, still have the most wins of any team this century and the third most in Major League Baseball over the past decade.
Sensing the endgame, Cohen requested, and was granted, a second meeting right before the beginning of the winter meetings in early December — an opportunity only the Mets received. (The Red Sox had inquired about one but Soto did not take it.) At a lunch gathering at his home in Boca Raton, Florida, Cohen went into dealmaking mode, asking: What do we need to do to get this done? More power in the lineup, Soto said. More pitching, he added. Already Cohen had promised Soto a luxury suite for every home game — a perk the Yankees declined to match — and a security detail for him and his family. And the money kept rising — to $750 million first and eventually to $765 million, $5 million more than the Yankees’ final offer spread over 16 years.
Back at home in the Dominican Republic, Soto vacillated until Sunday afternoon, as much of baseball arrived in Dallas for the meetings. As tantalizing as it would be to go down in the annals of the sport as an all-time-great Yankee, the allure of Cohen’s commitment to build something spoke to Soto. He was far from the highest-rated prospect in his international signing class. Soto, in fact, originally saw himself as a pitcher. But he added skills, iterated, grew, worked, pushed himself, sacrificed, pursued excellence. The kindred spirit Cohen saw was reciprocated.
Hours later, as the news emerged that Soto had chosen the Mets and the $765 million figure was reported, the long-established dichotomy of New York baseball was flipped. The eternal winners lost the sweepstakes; the perpetual losers won the lottery. This did not mean failure for the Yankees, just as it does not ensure success for the Mets, but paradigm shifts in baseball can happen in a hurry, and Soto’s decision represented one. For all he has done — the World Series win in Washington, the exceptional October with the Yankees and everything in between — his career is still in its nascent stages. So much is yet to come. And when it does, it will be with the New York Mets.
THE BEST HITTER of all time is Babe Ruth. Or Barry Bonds. Or Ted Williams. Or Ty Cobb or Henry Aaron or Willie Mays or Rogers Hornsby or dozens of others whose accomplishments, to this point in his career, dwarf Juan Soto’s.
And yet when asked the question of who warrants the title, Soto does not hesitate.
“Myself,” Soto said. “Until you prove me wrong.”
When pressed, Soto’s answer offers a window into how he sees the sport.
“Freddie Freeman,” Soto said. “I feel like he’s one of the best hitters I’ve ever seen. There’s a lot of guys that have (long) careers like (Albert) Pujols. Mike Trout has been having great years. But the guy I see every day since I’ve been in the big league has been Freddie Freeman.”
Soto’s answers, heavily skewed to active players, are not because he’s some myopic Zoomer with no knowledge of the game’s history. He knows it well. He values the greats. At the same time, it speaks to his reverence for the modern game. Hitting today is harder than it’s ever been, and Freeman almost single-handedly beat the Yankees in the World Series. There might be no prettier swing in baseball than Freeman’s when stroking an outside pitch to the opposite field. Soto deeply values being on the field, playing all 162 games in 2023 and 157 last year, and Freeman is the king of staying on the field, ailments be damned.
For Soto to enter the GOAT conversation among the general public, he’ll need more years like 2024, when he spent the season hitting second for the Yankees, one spot ahead of Aaron Judge. The Mets lineup he’s joining will be even more formidable than the Yankees’, with Francisco Lindor in the leadoff spot and Pete Alonso behind him. Add Brandon Nimmo at cleanup, Mark Vientos in the 5-hole and a variety of other dangerous bats occupying the bottom half of the lineup, and the Mets will need to hit as they await the return of Manaea, Montas, catcher Francisco Alvarez and second baseman Jeff McNeil from the injured list.
How the Mets evolve beyond 2025 will depend on the growth of their farm system — it’s currently a middle-of-the-pack group — and Cohen’s continued willingness to complement Soto and Lindor, the Mets’ two anchors. Replicating the Dodgers’ formula will take years, but their success begins with Mookie Betts, Ohtani and Freeman — all future Hall of Famers — atop the lineup. The vibe that helped fuel the Mets last October, Lindor said, is back this spring, and Soto’s addition to the lineup should only serve as accelerant.
“I’m happy he’s here,” Lindor said. “I think he’s definitely going to help us win. Why would I be mad? He’s putting our team in a much better spot. … My ego doesn’t get hurt when somebody big in this game walks in. It’s just like, I love it.”
He’s not the only one. In the stands at a game last week, Mets fans lined up along the dugout as Soto spent an inning autographing balls and jerseys for anyone who asked. Inside the clubhouse a few days earlier, Mets players were thrilled that Soto’s partnership with Call of Duty: Warzone allowed the team early access to a not-yet-released version of the Verdansk map. At the ownership level, they’re hopeful that the excitement about the Mets will only help Cohen’s attempts to win one of three casino licenses New York state plans to award this summer, paving the way for an $8 billion development next to Citi Field.
When Cohen bought the Mets for $2.4 billion, this was the idea: turn them into what they always should have been — not New York’s baseball bridesmaids but a team worthy of the city in which it resides. It took Juan Soto for that notion to feel real, and with Opening Day’s arrival, never has it been more so. In French, the name of the Picasso that Cohen bought from Steve Wynn — Le Rêve — means “dream.” The Mets are living theirs, and they don’t intend to wake up any time soon.
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Andrea Adelson
Florida State freshman linebacker Ethan Pritchard was shot Sunday night and is hospitalized in critical but stable condition in intensive care at a Tallahassee-area hospital, the school said Monday.
According to the Gadsden County Sheriff’s Office, Pritchard was inside a vehicle outside an apartment building when the shooting happened Sunday night in Havana, Florida, which is about 16 miles from Tallahassee, near the Georgia state line. An investigation into the shooting is ongoing.
In its statement, Florida State said Pritchard was visiting family at the time he was shot.
“The Pritchard family is thankful for the support from so many people, as well as the care from first responders and medical professionals, and asks that their privacy be respected at this time,” the FSU statement said.
Pritchard, who is from Sanford, Florida, enrolled at Florida State in January but did not play in the Seminoles’ season-opening victory against Alabama.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
Sports
‘It’s made for television’: How North Carolina has changed in nine months under Bill Belichick
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David Hale
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David Hale
ESPN Staff Writer
- College football reporter.
- Joined ESPN in 2012.
- Graduate of the University of Delaware.
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Andrea Adelson
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Andrea Adelson
ESPN Senior Writer
- ACC reporter.
- Joined ESPN.com in 2010.
- Graduate of the University of Florida.
CHAPEL HILL, N.C. — Just minutes before taking the stage at the ACC’s annual kickoff event at the Hilton Charlotte Uptown, Bill Belichick scrolled through his phone, reviewing his notes at a table in a dark service corridor as hotel employees stacked plates and glasses around. He had been shuffled through back hallways by conference and school staffers hoping to avoid the majority of the more than 800 media members gathered in an adjacent ballroom, all eager to photograph, question or simply glimpse college football’s biggest celebrity, but the spotlight awaited.
This is the new normal for North Carolina.
“It’s a little like the Deion [Sanders] thing at Colorado,” ACC commissioner Jim Phillips said. “He grabs your attention. It’s made for television.”
The ballroom where Belichick addressed topics as banal as the modern use of the fullback remained packed for his session, the ACC having distributed nearly 40% more credentials than a year earlier. In a breakout room intended for a more informal Q&A, more than 200 reporters elbowed through the crowd to pose a question. Belichick spoke for more than 20 minutes, even cracking a few jokes.
One reporter asked what it was like sitting in living rooms with recruits during the spring.
“I haven’t done that,” Belichick quipped. “That would be a recruiting violation right now.”
For anyone who had lived through Belichick’s chaotic early days of recruiting and roster building, it might have felt like an inside joke. The start to this new era in Chapel Hill was marked by missteps, confusion, broken promises and “harsh” and “businesslike” decisions to nudge players out the door, all while a skeleton staff bereft of college experience struggled to keep up.
“It was very stressful,” said a former member of the staff. “Everyone was running around like chickens with their heads cut off.”
It was a far cry from Belichick’s presentation at ACC media days this summer, where he appeared at ease in his new world — still far from his promise to bring a national championship to Chapel Hill but more aware of the pitfalls he’d face along the way.
When Belichick met with North Carolina’s team for the first time in December 2024, he delivered a mission statement for a program that has developed a reputation as a perennial underachiever. It was now being led by a man who had won 302 NFL games and six Super Bowls as a head coach. Things were about to change dramatically.
“We’re going to grind every single day,” he told the team, according to veteran quarterback Max Johnson. “It’s a process from January until the season starts.”
That process reaches its apex Monday night when UNC hosts TCU (8 p.m. on ESPN) in Belichick’s first game as a college head coach. It has been, according to more than two dozen sources including former assistants, current and former staffers, high school coaches, players, recruits and members of school administration who spoke with ESPN, at times enlightening and exhilarating, chaotic and tumultuous.
Belichick and his staff have had to adjust on the fly to the intricacies of NCAA recruiting rules, rebuild a roster and dodge scrutiny about the 73-year-old coach and his 24-year-old girlfriend. The promise Belichick didn’t offer to his team that first day, but the one that seems most likely to hold true, is that no part of this era would be boring.
“There’s things that we’re going to deal with that other schools aren’t,” Belichick said in his usual subdued tone. “That’s the way it goes.”
IF BELICHICK’S NFL résumé was a selling point to UNC fans, his status as a college newcomer quickly became uncomfortably apparent to numerous high school coaches, recruits and staffers who spoke to ESPN. They described the December and January recruiting push as a frenetic and disjointed process in which few people seemed to have a clear vision for the program’s direction.
In a quest to “go lean,” Belichick quickly cut ties with much of the previous staff — from assistant coaches to entry-level personnel who handled the basic operations of recruiting. When he was in the office, Belichick spent most of his time behind closed doors in a staff room with Tar Heels GM Mike Lombardi and newly hired personnel staffers Joe Anile and Andrew Blaylock, with one source involved in the process saying the Heels initially couldn’t do “traditional” visits because there were so few people for players to meet with. Another source at UNC said the decision to move on from the prior staff was understandable, but “you still need someone who knows how to book a flight or a hotel.” Multiple sources confirmed Belichick ultimately relented — at least temporarily — rehiring some analysts just to fill the void.
“A couple times they brought in good players and ignored them on their visit,” a source with direct knowledge of the situation said. “There were times that the kids would be waiting 30, 45 minutes or an hour and then all of a sudden, you’re not meeting with Coach Belichick anymore, and we’ll go back to the airport.”
Belichick and his top lieutenants were often flying blind when it came to NCAA rules and regulations, operating by a Silicon Valley-style “move fast and break things” approach, while public records obtained by ESPN show numerous reminders from compliance staff about recruiting quiet periods and NIL restrictions, along with a protracted debate about the boundaries of where coaches could meet with recruits on official visits.
“That’s probably the biggest thing they’ve had to learn, with what you can and can’t do,” another source who has worked with the program said. “They found out fast how many rules we’ve been dealing with over the past couple of years.”
Those initial months were a barrage of hasty evaluations and high-pressure sales pitches.
One recruit, who ultimately didn’t sign with UNC, recalled meeting Belichick for just a few minutes before being handed a contract and asked to sign.
“I kind of felt it was disrespectful to just put me in that situation after just meeting a coach,” the recruit said. “It was just crazy that you’d make a player sign a contract in front of a coach right after you just met him, and you haven’t even talked about numbers yet or anything about what I would get at that school.”
In-state recruit Jariel Cobb was planning a visit to an SEC school when he got a call from UNC, saying Belichick wanted to send a car to pick him up if he could visit campus immediately. When Cobb arrived in Chapel Hill with his mother, they were given the red-carpet treatment, with an array of people in UNC gear shaking hands and lauding the recruit’s skill set. Belichick met with Cobb, who had always dreamed of playing for his home-state Tar Heels but didn’t receive an offer from the prior staff. Belichick delivered a stern analysis: “I don’t know why in the hell they hadn’t offered you, but I looked at the film. I want you.”
“They treated us like celebrities,” Terri Cobb, Jariel’s mother, said. “Other schools had told him to think on it, but right out of the gate, Bill stood up and said, ‘You rocking and rolling with me or what?'”
Cobb signed, enrolled early and went through spring ball with the Tar Heels, calling it a positive experience, but his mother had noted that, during his initial conversations with Belichick, the coach had repeatedly mentioned two other players from Cobb’s high school he hoped would also come to UNC. In retrospect, she wonders if the Tar Heels’ interest in her son was aimed at getting an inside line to other players.
“They were flying through visitors,” the former member of the staff said. “It was unclear if Coach Belichick had evaluated the tape with how quickly they were bringing kids in.”
By the spring, with a full staff and enough time to better evaluate talent, North Carolina went into its second roster rebuild of the offseason. Overall, 39 players transferred out after Belichick’s arrival, including nearly two dozen after spring workouts. Cobb was among them. After just four months at his dream school, he was told he was unlikely to play and encouraged to transfer. It was, according to his mother, a similar story for many of his teammates. Cobb is now at Charlotte, which will play the Tar Heels in Week 2.
Meanwhile, UNC heavily recruited transfers during the spring portal window, which, according to numerous coaches across multiple Power 4 conferences, was described as the most bereft of talent since the portal era began in 2021. The Tar Heels added 23 players.
“There’s a little guesstimate there,” Belichick said. “You do the best you can to figure it out, but it’s a very inexact science.”
To find worthy additions in April and May, North Carolina was aggressive in identifying potential transfers. Five coaches told ESPN that they had been frustrated with North Carolina’s brazen efforts, led by Lombardi, to contact players directly prior to those players entering the portal, with at least one coach contacting Belichick to complain. Though tampering has become commonplace in college football, it’s often done through back-channels — current players talking to friends or former teammates, for example. North Carolina was “blatant” and “brazen,” according to one Power 4 coach. One player who spoke to ESPN said that he had been contacted by UNC in an effort to convince him to transfer, and he was warned not to inform anyone of the communication. If he did, he was told, he could lose his eligibility.
“I don’t think they’re doing anything that hasn’t been done [elsewhere],” one source said, “but I do think it’s such a drastic culture change from [former coach] Mack [Brown], so that it looks completely different to the people at UNC.”
While the style is different, so are the results. UNC already has nine blue-chip commitments for 2026 as Belichick has grown more comfortable with the recruiting process and focused on a national approach to talent acquisition.
“We’re in there with some good schools,” Belichick said, “and it’s good to be able to get kids coming to Carolina over some of the top schools in the country.”
After the rocky start, Belichick has used additional resources promised as part of his hiring to nearly double the recruiting support staff from what existed under Brown, yet it’s often Belichick who’s the linchpin to selling a player.
Belichick’s first time on the road recruiting was traveling to Rolesville High outside Raleigh, North Carolina, to visit brothers Zavion and Jayden Griffin-Haynes. Zavion had been committed to North Carolina under Brown, but decommitted after the coaching change. Jayden never received an offer under the previous staff.
Belichick stayed for nearly two hours, according to Zavion, and he broke down tape with the brothers, a key part of the coach’s sales pitch with high-level recruits.
“They stayed on me,” Zavion said. “They came to see me practice during spring ball. They made sure it was love from UNC and that really stood out to me. He wants me to be the face of the program, but he also said I have to work for it. He’s not just going to hand it to me, but I’m the guy he’s looking for in the program.”
Both brothers committed in June.
Weddington (N.C.) coach Andy Capone remembers Belichick visiting campus this spring to meet with recruit Thomas Davis Jr., and he was awestruck.
“I’ve been fortunate enough to meet a lot of head coaches,” Capone said, “but I’ve only taken a picture with two of them: Nick Saban and Bill Belichick.”
What truly impressed Capone was Belichick’s pitch once the fanfare died down. Belichick described a detailed plan for UNC, spent time with three recruits, including Davis, and, from memory, recited plays he had watched on film from their games, relating each to plays run by some of the greats from Belichick’s past.
“He’d say, ‘This is how I used Lawrence Taylor or Mike Vrabel,'” Capone said. “It was really cool to let them see a perspective of how he sees players in his system.”
Capone said Belichick was honest with his recruits, and he pitched them on his long history of preparing players for the NFL.
Before Belichick departed, Davis, who ultimately committed to Notre Dame, asked the question that has been at the forefront of so many debates since the NFL legend arrived at Carolina. Was Belichick really planning to stay long in Chapel Hill?
“I wouldn’t have taken this job to go back to the NFL,” Belichick told him. “We’re going to win national championships here.”
VINAY PATEL WAS never a Belichick fan. The UNC board of trustees member applauded the hire for the Tar Heels, but he had seen enough of Belichick in the pros to assume he wouldn’t like the guy.
Still, Patel was curious, so he attended a welcome banquet held on campus this winter, hosted by Belichick and his girlfriend, Jordon Hudson.
To his surprise, the event was friendly.
“I expected some pompous SOB, and he definitely wasn’t that,” Patel said. “And she’s not standoffish at all. We chatted, shook hands. She’s polite.”
A few months later, amid a media firestorm surrounding Belichick’s relationship with Hudson, who is nearly 50 years his junior, and her role in managing his personal brand, Patel remembers being perplexed by the seemingly ubiquitous outrage.
“I had a friend saying, ‘Can you believe this Jordon Hudson?’ — this and that,” Patel said. “And I’m just thinking, yes, but if you’d told me a year ago that UNC football was going to be a news story on a daily basis, I’d have thought you were nuts.”
If Patel favored an “all publicity is good publicity” approach, many members of the often staid and conservative UNC community saw it differently. In December, Belichick emailed UNC staff, insisting Hudson be copied on all communications. Hudson proceeded to inject her opinion on how the school’s PR staff operated, sometimes frustrating longtime employees. In one instance, she insisted Steve Belichick never be referred to as Bill’s son, and in a February email, asked to have public comments on UNC football social media sites censored, including one she said described her as “a predator.” UNC public relations replied that it “hid/erased one comment that had been posted about your personal life,” but did not find additional critical comments on UNC football’s Facebook page, according to documents obtained by ESPN in a public records request.
Bill Belichick was frustrated that the emails were shared, according to multiple sources, despite warnings from UNC staff that, as a public university, the athletics department was subject to open records requests.
“He didn’t like it at all, but he’s never worked at a public school,” a UNC source said. “[Hudson] would probably be more involved if we weren’t a public school.”
By the spring, Hudson’s involvement became routine public fodder. At UNC’s final spring practice, Hudson roiled the school’s old guard not only for being on the field, but for the way she was dressed. More attention followed, from a controversial appearance on “CBS Sunday Morning” to reports that Hudson had been banned from UNC’s football facility to suggestions in a New York Times story that a planned season of HBO’s “Hard Knocks” featuring North Carolina was scuttled due to her involvement.
Sources familiar with the negotiations told ESPN that the decision to nix the project was ultimately Belichick’s, saying he felt the timing of the HBO show, which would film only during fall camp, wouldn’t showcase the team’s strengths. The school instead pivoted to another project that will air on Hulu and cover North Carolina’s entire season.
Amid the spring’s media frenzy, the school was flooded with complaints from fans, donors and even professors, calling Belichick’s relationship “shameless,” “a disgrace” and “a laughing stock,” with one alum writing, “We’ve always prided ourselves on being a class act, but this is the kind of unnecessary distraction that does more harm than good. If Bill walks, he walks.”
UNC brass, including chancellor Lee Roberts and athletic director Bubba Cunningham, declined to comment on “the private lives of any of our employees,” as Roberts explained, and inside the locker room, few players seemed bothered.
Numerous sources who spoke to ESPN suggested much of the Hudson drama was overblown. One UNC administrator said that Hudson’s initial involvement was simply to “fill a void” until new PR staff could be hired and said Hudson hasn’t been a part of football-related correspondence since early in the spring.
A “talking points” email distributed to PR personnel and Belichick ahead of the ACC’s spring meetings in May detailed Hudson’s role, noting “once staff was in place, after about a month, she was no longer copied on emails. She is not involved in the hiring of staff, recruiting of players, communications related to the program or the building of the program” but “continues to be involved from a scheduling perspective.” The memo also noted that “Jordon is playing an active role in the filming and production of a documentary about Coach Belichick’s first season of college football, so in that capacity, she may be seen on the sidelines of Carolina Football practices or games.”
Multiple sources who spoke to ESPN doubted Belichick had been aware of the outsized attention she generated online — “He’s always watching film, not scrolling through her Instagram” — and believed that after the CBS interview, he took steps to limit her exposure in relation to the football program.
“It’s almost like you’re shielded from it,” one source with knowledge of the program said. “You’re finding all this stuff on TMZ and different sites, but nobody really talked about it around the building. It was more of a big deal nationally than it was here.”
A SMALL ARMY of reporters shuffled aimlessly outside a padlocked gate that, in a few moments, would provide a brief glimpse of North Carolina’s fall camp on a weekday in mid-August. Access to outsiders has been severely restricted, and a pair of onlookers standing at a fourth-floor window in a nearby building had likely already gleaned more information about this Tar Heels team than the local media had all summer.
In the Belichick era, there are insiders and there are outsiders.
North Carolina has beefed up security. When one local reporter used binoculars to glimpse Hudson and other visitors at a UNC practice through a narrow window of the indoor practice facility, a guard immediately interrupted. The football building inside Kenan Stadium has been off limits to all nonessential football personnel, and the school installed facial recognition sensors to enter the facility. No UNC player was permitted to speak to the media for the first six months of Belichick’s tenure, and Belichick is also skipping a weekly radio show, typically a staple for college coaches, ceding the stage to Lombardi.
Belichick’s staff is filled with trusted confidants. Lombardi had been an advisor with the New England Patriots and even co-hosted Belichick’s podcast. Lombardi’s son, Matt, is UNC’s quarterbacks coach. Two of Belichick’s sons — Steve and Brian — coach on defense. One of his former players, Jamie Collins, is the inside linebackers coach. Several sources suggest senior staff members monitor outgoing communications from other staffers to curtail leaks about the inner workings of the program.
On the inside, however, the view of Belichick has been far different than the public persona he has projected for decades.
“They’ve been really easy and good to work with,” said Cunningham, who had initially been skeptical of the hire. “It’s a different model. They wanted to bring in their own coaches and personnel and recruiting people, people they’ve worked with previously. It’s a very personable staff.”
𝐌𝐢𝐜’𝐝 𝐔𝐩 🎙️🎙️🎙️@Belichick_B pic.twitter.com/cf2axVs1D6
— Carolina Football (@UNCFootball) August 15, 2025
This winter, Belichick had pizza delivered to UNC fraternities and sororities ahead of the Heels’ men’s basketball game against Duke. He did the same for several of UNC’s winter and spring sports teams.
Belichick is a longtime lacrosse fan, and as he surveyed the football practice field during the spring — the same field where the lacrosse teams practice — he posed a question: Where are the lacrosse lines? Belichick was told that, if the football team practices that morning, the lacrosse field wouldn’t get painted.
“He said, ‘Paint the lines,’ and we got them,” UNC’s women’s lacrosse coach Jenny Levy said. “I think he’s diving into what college athletics is all about.”
Former UNC linebacker Jeff Schoettmer attended the school’s “Practice Like a Pro” day to conclude spring practice, and he watched Belichick mingle with recruits, transfers and their parents. At a banquet afterward, the coach met with former players and donors.
“It’s pretty incredible to see how easily he moves among different types of people,” Schoettmer said. “Him holding court with former players — it’s just like you see some of these extroverted coaches who’ll talk to anybody, but you don’t expect Bill to sit there and tell war stories with guys he’s never coached. But that’s how much love I think he has for North Carolina.”
Inside the football facility, Belichick thought Brown’s former office on the fourth floor of the football building was isolating, so he set up his own office on the second floor to be in the same space occupied by the players.
“I can’t coach the players if I’m not around them,” Belichick told ESPN. “I try to go in and out of meetings and be visible and present.”
Cunningham said he has been struck by how accessible Belichick is to the team, routinely sitting in film study sessions and breaking down plays.
In June, Belichick met with his quarterbacks each day for about an hour, a process that began during his tenure with the Patriots because, he said, “It’s important for the coach and the quarterback to be on the same page.”
Johnson, one of the few holdovers from Brown’s 2024 team, said the involvement of the coach in the small details of the game is unlike anything he had seen.
“We did something different every day,” Johnson said. “Everything is really detailed, and that’s what I’ve loved.”
If Belichick’s tenure has been marked by a steadfast devotion to those in his orbit at the expense of those on the outside, it has done little to temper enthusiasm around the program.
Donations are up, season tickets are sold out, and UNC has added new premium-seating options that will further expand its revenue opportunities. Rick Barakat, the athletics department’s new chief revenue officer, said UNC will exceed its all-time gross revenue record this year.
“The pitch has changed because the excitement’s never been higher,” Barakat said. “We’ve had bouts of success historically, but I don’t think we’ve ever seen Carolina football at the level it is right now in the national news cycle, and that trickles down into every conversation.”
Even entities in Belichick’s orbit seemed to bask in the glow of newfound attention. Phillips raved that Belichick “is great for the ACC and great for North Carolina.” One executive for the Charlotte 49ers referred to a sizable uptick in season ticket sales as “The Belichick Bump,” and AD Mike Hill was tasked with finding more seating capacity for the Week 2 game by bringing in “bleachers everywhere.” Charlotte’s initial advertising for the game focused on Belichick, a decision critiqued by the school’s chancellor, according to public records obtained by ESPN, for ignoring its own new coach, Tim Albin.
Many of North Carolina’s administrators who spoke to ESPN said the investment would be judged on wins and losses, but it’s also possible the spotlight could be a springboard to something else.
“You’re seeing a lot more people involved as far as helping out the program,” one of those sources said. “You can feel that UNC is embracing more on the football end. It’s been the talk of the last two years, but the push to get to the SEC, I think, was a major reason for this show of investment in football.”
UPON HIS HIRE, Belichick immediately pushed a new tagline for Tar Heels football. They would be “the 33rd NFL team,” and those early days included an influx of professional know-how, from Lombardi to former Patriots nutritionist Josh Grimes and Moses Cabrera, Belichick’s longtime strength and conditioning guru.
“Coach B comes in with a different mindset in terms of everything’s going to be at the highest level possible, no matter what he has to do to get there,” wide receiver Jordan Shipp said.
Belichick has delivered that message repeatedly, both inside the locker room and to the media, often saying players who “don’t want to work, they don’t want to be good. That’s OK, but if you’re like that, Carolina’s a bad place to be. It’s too important to the rest of us.”
Belichick retained Freddie Kitchens as the lone full-time position coach from the previous staff, in large part because of his NFL background. Kitchens spent 16 years in the NFL before moving on to college, including a stint as the Cleveland Browns head coach. Belichick has said all of the systems they are implementing — from offense to defense to special teams — are NFL-based.
“Fundamentals and techniques that go with them are based on that too, practice, structure, meeting, installation, teaching. There were some modifications we had to make, but basically it’s all the same,” Belichick said.
Belichick has gotten more used to recruiting as well. Those who interacted with him on the recruiting trail in January noticed a big difference in their exchanges six months later, describing him as “more personable.”
“He understands that he had to change his way of doing things, and he’s doing that, and he’s really adapting to this new culture,” said Rolesville (N.C.) coach Ranier Rackley, who has three players committed to UNC. “So that’s why he’s getting a lot of these guys because of that.”
Collins, who played for Belichick for parts of seven seasons during a 10-year NFL career, said he has seen a softening of the coach who, in the pros, was known for his all-business approach to relationships.
“The old Bill comes out, but we live in a different world now,” Collins said. “I’ve seen a different side of Bill coaching these guys.”
In June, Rackley brought a group of players to UNC’s 7-on-7 camp, and he took note of Belichick moving from one group to the next, watching as many teams and players as possible. There was a different energy to the experience, he said.
In all, nearly 4,000 kids showed up during UNC football camps that month. For Belichick, who has often downplayed the leap from the NFL to college, it was an eye-opening moment.
“Once you actually see it, it feels like Normandy,” Belichick told ESPN. “It’s like, ‘Here they come.'”
North Carolina hasn’t won an ACC title since 1980, but with Belichick on the sideline, there’s no lack of optimism in Chapel Hill.
“We’re here to win football games,” Shipp said. “He let us know that yeah, we’re going to have a spotlight. But that’s not what we’re worried about. We’re worried about winning games.”
For UNC, though, there’s more to the story. Belichick is a bona fide winner, but he’s also a show — occasionally controversial, often recalcitrant, sometimes funny — and for a program looking for attention, he has delivered.
“We want to be competitive in football,” Roberts said. “We want to be part of the national conversation. Carolina stands for excellence across the board, and we want to be excellent in football. I think we’re well on our way.”
What comes after that remains a mystery — one Belichick has fiercely protected throughout a long offseason. Now, the veil is lifted.
The new era of North Carolina football is here.
Michael Rothstein and Eli Lederman contributed to this story.
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