The end of Mack Brown’s tenure in Chapel Hill as the head coach of the North Carolina Tar Heels football program wasn’t ideal. But it wasn’t awful either. They went 6-7 and lost the Fenway Bowl. Their worst defeat was by just 20 points. Bill Belichick surpassed that and then some in his home debut against TCU on Monday.
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Belichick’s Tar Heels lost 48-14, a 34-point blowout worse than anything UNC suffered under Brown’s stewardship from 2019 to 2024. The worst they were ever beaten during that span was a 39-10 defeat in the 2022 ACC Championship Game to Clemson. That’s not a good sign for Hoodie Bill. Fans and pundits across the nation are already hitting the panic button: losing like that is bad, but losing like that to an unranked TCU team is really bad.
Nonetheless, there are some who are keeping a cool head.
Comedian Bill Burr, who is a Belichick fan from his time in New England, was pulling no punches about the performance, even comparing Belichick at UNC to Joe Namath on the Rams and Jonny Unitas on the Chargers when they were “washed up” at the end of their Hall of Fame careers. However, he argued that Belichick is essentially “in retirement” now, so the media should lay off him.
“That’s a basketball school. Can’t you let a man enjoy his retirement? Can’t the man just go to North Carolina? He dealt with New England winners for 20 years, can’t he just go down there? Have a good time with his girlfriend?” Burr asked with a laugh.
“Just because we’ve never won a Super Bowl, and maybe you’re miserable in your relationship, we gotta attack this guy 360? He’s at North Carolina, he’s having a good time,” the comedian added.
As he tends to do, Burr was able to get the whole room laughing with his hilarious comparisons and off-the-cuff remarks. But what he was essentially saying is that Belichick’s NFL legacy should not be tarnished by what he considers a retirement plan in the college ranks, coaching the Tar Heels. North Carolina is a basketball state, not a football state. This isn’t Alabama or Texas we’re talking about here.
Many in the media are talking about Belichick right now, partly because of his high-profile girlfriend. And questions about whether his UNC struggles could affect his NFL legacy will only grow if his team keeps losing like this.
Thankfully, the schedule gets a little bit easier for UNC coming up. TCU isn’t ranked, but they’re no push-overs either. In Week 2, UNC gets a better matchup against Charlotte from the American, who have just one winning season since reviving the football program in 2013 after a 65-year hiatus.
After that, they get another gimme against Richmond from the Patriot League before it gets tougher again with a road game against UCF and a home date with No. 8 Clemson.
