Bill Belichick offers blunt insight on players' NFL adjustment from college
BOSTON -- The NCAA estimates that close to 18,000 players participate in college football at the Division-I level. The NFL employs only about 1,700 players during the season. Only about 1.6 percent of college football players get drafted by an NFL team.
Naturally, the difference in the collegiate game and the professional game is massive, something that might get underestimated at times. But to help summarize just how drastic that difference is, Bill Belichick offered a brief but telling explanation on Tuesday.
"Most of these guys are just better than everybody else [in college]," Belichick said of collegiate players who end up going to the NFL. "They're just better than them."
Simple enough.
That talent disparity obviously goes away in the NFL, where only the best of the best even get a chance to possibly make a team, let alone become a star. The line from Belichick came as part of a longer answer when asked to assess Christian Barmore's growth heading into his second season.
"Same thing for all those guys, really," Belichick said. "That first year to second year, first of all, they have a much better idea of what the length of the season, what the pace of the season is -- the spring, the break, training camp, the length of the regular season, the daily competition in the NFL that's different than college, when most of these guys are just better than everybody else – they're just better than them. So, it's a daily competition. Then understanding what we do, and then understanding what goes on on the other side of the ball, how other opponents play, techniques, schemes, matchups."
Belichick added: "And so a year of all that is like two graduate courses. It's like getting an MBA and then a doctorate in football. They just grow tremendously, and now they have that. So there still will be growth, but it will probably a little more incremental than that big jump from year one to year two."
And even though Belichick himself is entering his 48th season as an NFL coach, he still can relate to the young players getting that culture shock upon entering the league.
"No different than when any of us took our first job and, after a year on the job, you just know a lot more than you did when you walked in there and you don't know anything," he said. "You think you do, but you really don't."
