Bill Belichick has won six Super Bowls and made thousands of critical decisions that define his legacy as one of the greatest coaches in football history. But Saturday afternoon in Chapel Hill, one of his boldest calls came up about an inch short. North Carolina fell 17-16 to No. 16 Virginia in overtime after Belichick went for two and the win instead of kicking the extra point to force a second overtime. 

Running back Benjamin Hall caught a pass in the flat from quarterback Gio Lopez, and he muscled forward through a Virginia defender. But he was tackled literally an inch from breaking the plane of the end zone. The Tar Heels dropped to 2-5 overall and 0-3 in ACC play, extending their losing streak to four games. But the conversation afterward was about whether Belichick made the right call.​

The decision to go for two sparked immediate debate. But ESPN’s Steve Coughlin came to Belichick’s defense on the SVPod podcast. “While we’re talking ACC, I want to bring up one of the greatest head coaches of all time, and I absolutely love that Bill Belichick went for two in the first overtime,” Coughlin said.

“It’s the right move to do. You have to go for two the next time anyway. Go for it now. One play to win the game. One. Go for it, man. I don’t know if it was a delay or whatever, but it was the right decision last night. If you’re the second team and you’re down seven and you score, go for two right there.”

The logic is sound. Under college overtime rules, teams must attempt a two-point conversion starting in the second overtime. So why not just go for the win right away when you have the chance? Belichick himself kept his explanation characteristically brief when asked about it after the game: “Just trying to win the game,” he said, repeating those same six words when pressed for more detail.​

The game itself was a defensive slugfest that nobody saw coming. North Carolina’s defense absolutely dominated Virginia’s previously potent offense. They held the Cavaliers to just 259 total yards and recorded six sacks. This is more than Virginia had allowed in its first seven games combined.

Virginia head coach Tony Elliott admitted he was surprised by the call and said he would’ve kicked it to force a second overtime. But he also acknowledged Bill Belichick’s resume speaks for itself. “I would’ve kicked it. … But hey, he’s won a lot of football games,” Elliott said. “He’s one of the best in the business for a reason. Obviously, he felt good about the call.”

And it nearly worked. Hall was so close to getting in that the officials had to review it multiple times to confirm he was short. UNC wide receiver Jordan Shipp was in tears in the locker room afterward, knowing how close the team had come to its first ACC win and what would’ve been a signature moment for Bill Belichick’s first season in Chapel Hill. But if nothing else, the decision showed that even at 73 years old and coaching college football for the first time, Belichick isn’t afraid to go for the jugular when he smells blood in the water.​​

The ugly reality of a losing streak

As gutsy as that two-point conversion call was, it still ended the same way everything else has gone for Belichick this season, with a loss. And not just any loss, but the fourth straight for North Carolina. This marked the fourth losing streak of Belichick’s entire coaching career. Think about that for a second. A guy who won six Super Bowls, who coached in the NFL for nearly three decades, is now sitting at 2-5 in his first college season with a losing streak. And that streak is inching closer to matching his worst stretches from the 1990s. 

His first came in 1991-92 when he dropped five straight with the Browns, three to close out ’91 and two more to start the next year. Then he hit a six-game skid in 1995, and it took him 28 years to endure another streak like this. It came in 2023 during his final miserable season with the Patriots when they limped to a 4-13 finish. Now here he is again, watching Benjamin Hall get tackled an inch short of what would’ve been his first ACC win, and the nightmare keeps rolling.​

The math isn’t pretty moving forward, either. North Carolina still has Syracuse, Stanford, Wake Forest, Duke, and NC State left on the schedule, and realistically, Belichick is looking at probably two or three more losses minimum from that group. If he drops two more games, this current losing streak will become the longest of his entire coaching career, surpassing even those brutal Cleveland years. That’s a staggering reality for someone whose entire identity is built on winning, on making adjustments, on being smarter than everybody else in the room.