Bill Belichick’s first coaching staff at North Carolina continues to come together.

Longtime NFL special teams coach Mike Priefer and veteran SEC offensive line coach Will Friend are expected to finalize deals to join Belichick’s staff, sources told ESPN on Wednesday.

After coaching for nearly a decade in college, Priefer moved to the NFL in 2002 and was a special teams coordinator from 2006 to 2022. He is noted in Cleveland Browns history as serving as the head coach in a January 2021 wild-card victory over the Pittsburgh Steelers, which is the franchise’s only postseason win since the 1994 season. Priefer stepped in for Kevin Stefanski, who watched the game at home with COVID.

Priefer was the special teams coordinator for the Kansas City Chiefs (2006-08), Denver Broncos (2009-10), Minnesota Vikings (2011-18) and Browns (2019-22). He brings ties to the Naval Academy, something he shares with Belichick and his family. Priefer is a Navy graduate and served as a graduate assistant there.

Friend worked last season as Western Kentucky‘s offensive coordinator. He brings strong recruiting ties in the South, having worked at Georgia, Tennessee, Auburn and Mississippi State as the offensive line coach. He has also worked as the offensive coordinator at Colorado State and WKU.

Friend has a long history of developing linemen for the NFL.

With Priefer and Friend, there are six known members of Belichick’s staff, which includes longtime NFL coach Freddie Kitchens as the offensive coordinator and veteran NFL coach Stephen Belichick as the defensive coordinator.

The hires line up the objectives of Belichick, who has stressed that he wants to run the Tar Heels like a NFL program.

Before taking the UNC job, Belichick told ESPN’s Pat McAfee that if he were to run a college program, it would be a “pipeline to the NFL for the players that had the ability to play in the NFL.”

He added: “It would be a professional program. Training, nutrition, scheme, coaching, techniques that would transfer to the NFL. It would be an NFL program at a college level and an education that would get the players ready for their career after football.”

Texas quarterback Quinn Ewers is declaring for the NFL draft, he announced in a video on social media.

The decision ends a career at Texas that saw him help revive the program from a 5-7 season in 2021 and lead the Longhorns to their only two College Football Playoff appearances, in the 2023 and 2024 seasons.

Ewers went 21-5 as a starter the past two years and to two CFP semifinal appearances. In his career, he led Texas to wins at Alabama and at Michigan, led it to the Big 12 title in 2023 and to consecutive College Football Playoff wins over Clemson and Arizona State this season. Those are Texas’ only College Football Playoff victories since that format began in 2014.

🤘🏼 pic.twitter.com/V5H8sJbaWM

— Quinn Ewers (@QuinnEwers) January 15, 2025

Ewers played in 36 total games for the Longhorns after transferring from Ohio State. He threw for 9,128 yards and 68 touchdowns in his three seasons in Austin, completing 64.9% of his passes.

Ewers’ decision doesn’t come as much of a surprise. He told ESPN’s “College GameDay” in an interview that aired before the Cotton Bowl on Friday that he did not expect to return to college football next year.

When asked about what he hoped his Texas legacy would be, Ewers said: “A great teammate that pushed his teammates to be the best that they could be, but pushed himself to be the best that he could be, so he’s able to say things like that. And, you know, one of the best to ever do it here.”

Ewers finished tied for fourth all time for wins by a Texas quarterback with 27, tying Sam Ehlinger and training only Colt McCoy (45), Vince Young (30) and Bobby Layne (28), per ESPN Research.

When asked what it’s like to be in the conversation with those Longhorns legends, Ewers told ESPN before the Goodyear Cotton Bowl Classic: “It’s definitely special. I mean, growing up, you know, seeing Colt McCoy play, you know, watching highlights of Vince Young, you know, obviously I was really young whenever he was playing but just hearing all the stories and, you know, the legacy that they left behind. It’s unreal to even be in the conversation with those guys.”

Ewers will be a fascinating draft prospect, as one general manager told ESPN that among his scouts there was a “wild variance” of opinions. His three years in the offensive system with Texas coach Steve Sarkisian, pure arm talent and consistent production will be positives. He’s expected to perform well in the workout and interview portions of the draft process, with time in a sophisticated offense a positive in the eyes of the NFL.

Ewers was the No. 2 overall recruit in the country, per ESPN’s rankings, and came out of high school a year early in the Class of 2021 and attended Ohio State for a semester. Part of the allure of that decision was opportunities for name, image and likeness that wouldn’t have been available if he’d stayed in Texas for his senior year of high school at Southlake Carroll High School in the Dallas area.

That trailblazing decision began a college career that played out in a fishbowl. He transferred to Texas in December, with Texas in the wake of a 5-7 season. For Sarkisian, Ewers’ decision loomed large.

“For him to come back home, I think sent a little bit of a message to everybody that we’re trying to recruit the best players, not only around the country, but in the state of Texas,” Sarkisian told ESPN before the Cotton Bowl. “And for him to come home, I think then rallied a few other guys to want to stay home. It kind of started that process of us signing a great class and we built on it from there.”

Ewers’ departure puts the program in Arch Manning‘s hands as the starter in 2025. The son of Cooper Manning, grandson of former NFL quarterback Archie Manning and nephew of Super Bowl-winning quarterbacks Peyton and Eli Manning passed for 939 yards and nine touchdowns and ran for four TDs this season.

Jack Hoffman, the young Nebraska football fan who ran for a touchdown during the 2013 Cornhuskers’ spring game and became a catalyst for pediatric brain cancer fundraising, died Wednesday after a 14-year battle with cancer, according to the Team Jack Foundation. He was 19.

Hoffman was diagnosed with a cancerous glioma when he was 5. Doctors told the family that most of his golf ball-size tumor could not be removed. But his father, Andy Hoffman, did exhaustive research and found a doctor in Boston who extracted more than 90% of the tumor.

Jack’s favorite player was Nebraska running back Rex Burkhead, and before the surgery, Andy reached out to Nebraska hoping his son could meet him. Burkhead had lunch with Hoffman and raced him on the field, and the family forged an enduring friendship with the former NFL back.

In late 2011, when the Cornhuskers trailed Ohio State by three touchdowns, Burkhead fired up some of his teammates by mentioning the inspirational boy he’d just met. “Hey, Jack wouldn’t give up,” he told them, “so why should we?” Nebraska rallied, and Burkhead scored the game-winning touchdown.

A year and a half later, in April 2013, Nebraska’s coaches decided to put Jack in a spring game. Wearing an ill-fitting helmet that bounced as he ran, Jack, who was then 7, ran for a 69-yard touchdown as 60,000 fans roared. Video of the play garnered more than 10 million views on YouTube.

Hoffman went to Washington to meet President Barack Obama and won an ESPY award for the best moment in sports. Known simply as “The Run,” the moment helped Hoffman’s dad launch the Team Jack Foundation. The venture, started in tiny Atkinson, Nebraska — population 1,245 — has raised more than $14 million to aid pediatric brain cancer research.

In 2020, Andy Hoffman was diagnosed with glioblastoma multiforme, an aggressive brain cancer. He died less than a year later. In ESPN interviews with the family in September 2020, Bri Hoffman, Jack’s mom, said their hope for Jack was to keep the tumor at bay as long as they could.

“For kids and tumors,” she said, “what [doctors] told us is if you can keep it from growing until they reach like their 20s, a lot of times they just go away.”

With the help of clinical trials, and despite the seizures that could come at any time, Jack Hoffman was able to do things that seemed unimaginable in 2011. He went to homecoming and was a lineman for his high school football team in Atkinson. He went tubing, boating and fishing and played tug-of-war with his dog, Roxy. He cheered on his Nebraska Cornhuskers.

But brain scans in 2023 revealed tumor progression and he underwent a tumor resection surgery in summer 2024. Pathology results eventually revealed that his tumor had advanced to a high-grade glioma, “which is extremely rare,” according to the Team Jack website.

After receiving 30 radiation treatments, Hoffman began his freshman year at the University of Nebraska at Kearney in the pre-law program this past fall. He wanted to be a lawyer, like his dad.

In a statement Wednesday, the university called Hoffman “a valued member of our Loper community” and noted he earned a spot on the dean’s list this past semester.

“Jack was widely admired across Nebraska and beyond for his courageous spirit and dedication to raising awareness about childhood cancer through the Team Jack Foundation,” the school’s statement read. “We extend our heartfelt condolences to Jack’s family, friends and all those whose lives he touched. His connection to the UNK community was meaningful, and his impact will not be forgotten. We are grateful for the time he shared with us.”

In a CaringBridge post from December, Bri Hoffman said that it was “heartbreaking” to email Jack’s professors to let them know he couldn’t take his finals because he was too sick.

“He has worked very hard this semester,” she wrote.

In an interview with ESPN in 2020, Hoffman said he had no idea “The Run” would be such a big deal. He thought it was just going to be in front of a few people and was scared when he realized it wasn’t. But he changed into an oversize pair of old football pants, and his dad took him out onto the field. Hoffman wasn’t sure where the touchdown line was, so Andy told him to keep going until he hit the fence.

Hoffman held on to that advice when he dealt with unknowns.

“If you don’t know it,” he said, “just run until you hit the fence.”