North Carolina Tar Heels head coach Bill Belichick has faced a rough welcome to college football after nearly five decades in the NFL. While UNC’s most recent 21–18 loss to the Cal Golden Bears in Berkeley showed some fight, the previous Power 4 defeats were far less encouraging.
The Tar Heels have endured a 38–10 home loss to the Clemson Tigers, a 34–9 setback on the road against UCF, and a 48–14 blowout in their Week 1 home opener against TCU, marking a difficult start to Belichick’s first collegiate campaign.
The Washington Post’s Patrick Stevens believes that North Carolina’s remaining schedule — one that could mirror their rough first half — likely won’t capture national attention anymore. The Tar Heels still have matchups against regional foes such as Virginia, Wake Forest, Duke, and NC State, along with games versus Syracuse and Stanford to close out the year.
“If there’s a silver lining for the Tar Heels, it’s that this is probably one of the last times a clearly middling team is going to command much attention,” Stevens wrote. “They have another Friday night game on Halloween (at Syracuse), but the rest of their second-half schedule — Virginia, Stanford, at Wake Forest, Duke, at N.C. State — mostly features longtime regional rivals. Now that creates other problems closer to home. But on a national scale, the time has just about come to tune out the Tar Heels until 2026.”
The situation resembles what happened in Boulder late in the 2023 season, when Deion “Prime Time” Sanders’ Colorado program faded from national relevance after early hype. Similarly, Bill Belichick’s Power 4 debut at UNC has been disappointing, with skepticism growing toward general manager Michael Lombardi’s roster decisions since taking over personnel duties in what some now call “Chapel Bill.”
While Coach Prime turned things around with a 9–3 campaign in 2024, aided by bringing stars like Shedeur Sanders and Travis Hunter with him, Belichick’s situation looks different. He’s brought along his sons, Steven and Brian, to run the defense — and questionable staff and culture choices have drawn scrutiny.
In short, different brands of nepotism are producing very different outcomes — and unlike Sanders’ success story in Colorado, Belichick’s Tar Heels are showing the opposite on the field.
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