CHAPEL HILL, N.C. For decades, North Carolina football has sold itself on “new hope” a fresh start that never seems to last. On Monday night, that hope came wrapped in a gray hoodie with cutoff sleeves.
Bill Belichick, the six-time Super Bowl champion who left the NFL after being passed over for new jobs last winter, made his highly anticipated college coaching debut with the Tar Heels. The result was a disaster: a 48-14 loss to TCU that emptied Kenan Stadium long before the final whistle.
For $10 million a year, UNC thought it was getting the greatest coach of all time. Instead, Belichick’s debut looked closer to Charlie Weis at Kansas than Vince Lombardi in Green Bay.
“They just outplayed us, they outcoached us and they were better than we were,” Belichick admitted after the game. “That’s all there is to it.”
A Hype-Fueled Build-Up, a Brutal Reality
Belichick’s arrival in Chapel Hill was one of the biggest offseason stories in college football. The 73-year-old spent nine months doing book tours, awkward interviews and a branding push alongside his 24-year-old girlfriend. But almost nothing was said about the actual team he inherited.
On Monday, the silence made sense.
UNC briefly gave fans a jolt by scoring on its first drive, but the rest of the night was a collapse. The Tar Heels were outgained 542-222, failed to compete on the line of scrimmage and gave up two defensive touchdowns. By the fourth quarter, the light-show bracelets handed out to fans looked more like a power outage than a celebration.
Defensive back Kaleb Cost didn’t sugarcoat it: “We have to be tougher as a team. It’s definitely disappointing, but it’s back to the drawing board. We’ll go hard every day this week and make sure it never happens again.”
Star Power in the Stands, But Not on the Field
Before kickoff, Chapel Hill looked like a program reborn. Michael Jordan and Mia Hamm flew in to watch. ESPN hyped the game like a national event. Tailgates and bars overflowed with fans.
Two hours later, UNC was a trending topic for all the wrong reasons.
The Tar Heels’ roster, stripped of depth and top-end talent, was brutally exposed. Reporters even noticed the team’s game-day notes included blank spots where player names should have been a classic Belichick move to keep everything secret. After Monday, though, it looked more like the program simply had nothing to show.
“Too many three-and-outs, too many long plays on defense and two turnovers for touchdowns,” Belichick said. “You can’t overcome that.”
Can Belichick Make This Work?
Why Belichick took this job remains unclear money, pride, a chance to coach with his sons, maybe a last shot to prove NFL owners wrong. But his first game shifted the tone immediately.
At the college level, recruiting is everything, and Belichick’s first UNC roster is alarmingly thin. Even Mack Brown, often criticized for underachieving, never fielded a team this lacking in talent.
That doesn’t mean this is doomed to be a decade-long mistake. Plenty of less-decorated coaches have started faster with worse rosters. Still, the honeymoon is already over.
“We just keep working and keep grinding away,” Belichick said. “We’re better than what we were tonight, but we have to go out and prove it. Nobody’s going to do it for us.”
For now, Chapel Hill has to cling to its namesake New Hope. But if Monday was any indication, even Belichick might not be enough to keep it alive.
