ESPN reporter ‘made it out alive’ after vintage Bill Belichick sideline interview

Bill Belichick isn’t the most garrulous coach with the media, and his tenure at North Carolina has been no different.

ESPN sideline reporter Stormy Buonantony got her indoctrination with interviewing the publicly taciturn North Carolina coach Saturday.

At the start of the second quarter of the Tar Heels road game vs. Clemson, Buonantony tried to pry some answers out of Belichick about his team’s first-quarter performance that saw the team ahead 14-3.

“We talked a lot yesterday about how much cleaner this version of your team has played than others. What have you seen so far with the penalties?” Buonantony asked

“Too many, yeah. Too many,” Belichick replied.

“Is there anything else you think that this group needs to clean up?” Buonantony followed up.

Belichick initially didn’t hear the question and asked for it to be repeated, but did not reveal much about his team’s play.

“No, we’ve just got to keep executing better and … too many penalties,” he said.

“Well, Stormy Buonantony — welcome to the club,” ESPN play-by-play announcer Bob Wischusen said. “You are now a member. There’s hundreds of media members that have sat in that Patriots room over the years that probably right now are printing up Stormy’s jacket.”

Analyst Louis Riddick, who played defensive back for Belichick on the Browns, said the coach was “locked in” and that he probably was not fully thrilled with the Tar Heels’ performance.

“I’m fine, I made it out alive, guys,” Buonantony said. “But I did just want to say, a very different feel on the sideline than we had yesterday at our meetings, right? The way he was talking, it was storytime.”

The crew then said Belichick is more open in “off the record” conversations, particularly those about football history.

Belichick’s crew, off to a 2-0 start on the season, led 17-6 over Clemson at halftime and kept the Tigers’ offense mostly in check.

The eight-time Super Bowl champ’s week has been filled with news, as the school — amid an internal probe into the team — revealed that his son, defensive coordinator Steve Belichick, will resign from the program when his medical leave ends on Oct. 27.

This comes weeks after general manager Michael Lombardi stepped down prior to the investigation revealing “certain actions demonstrated a disregard for Carolina’s values and standards of conduct.”