One of the most unexpected turns that college football took last season was the North Carolina Tar Heels naming Bill Belichick as their head coach. At 72 and after coaching the New England Patriots for 24 seasons, Belichick exposed himself to the nitty-gritties of college football. Maybe the Tar Heels fans hoped against hope about Belichick bringing years of NFL experience to the table. But here we are. The Tar Heels now stand with three losses and two wins one month into the 2025 season. An insider thus addressed the elephant in the room. 

Dan Wolken initially did not put the blame entirely on Belichick. The Tar Heels’ head coach’s floundering isn’t entirely his fault. The people around him either don’t get it or don’t care. The result? By midseason, the team has become a national laughingstock. But what makes Wolken point fingers at Belichick?

Wolken did not mince his words and dished out a brutal reality check. “Bill, here’s some free advice: In North Carolina, they don’t care about you enough to put up with all this. You’re not one of them. They merely hired you to do a job. And if you don’t want to do it, rest assured they will find someone else who will,” said the analyst. Maybe, now that the Tar Heels landed in a deep soup, the analyst expected Belichick to make the most out of the bye week. But what did he do instead?

Belichick flew off to Nantucket, Mass., amid the University of North Carolina football team’s bye week, with ladylove Jordon Hudson. Caught on camera during their getaway, Hudson and 73-year-old Belichick wandered the island boardwalk and town streets, with Hudson showing off a cute navy sweater complete with a lobster design.

While Belichick takes a dream vacay, his program is in shambles. North Carolina’s losses to power-conference opponents already average 29 points. One wonders how much worse it might’ve been if Belichick hadn’t carved out 45 minutes in the spring to show any concern for the program beyond himself. 

“It’s perhaps a small thing, but it’s just part of what you do as a college coach to connect past with future, to deepen relationships and to show you care about guys who wore the uniform even if you didn’t coach them,” said Wolken. It might be a small gesture, but it’s what college coaching is all about. Connecting past with future, building relationships, and showing you care about every player who’s worn the jersey, coached or not. Not just Wolken, Josh Pate, too, has signed up for Team Belichick Doubters.

Bill Belichick fails to win trust even after a big promise

On the October 5th episode of his podcast, Pate hinted at how Belichick is running on borrowed time. “North Carolina is a disaster. But even I have to believe that Mack Brown was somewhere yesterday in a very comfy recliner, cashing a massive buyout check with a smirk on his face, knowing good and well he could do infinitely better in 2025 at North Carolina than Bill Belichick can and will.” The Tar Heels were able to pull the trigger for Mack Brown, whose buyout sat at $2.8 million.

But that won’t be a cakewalk in Belichick’s case. The former NFL head coach’s contract is as high as $50 million for the first three years, ensuring at least $30 million, regardless of performance. And obviously, this did not sit well with Pate. Without mincing his words, he said, “Maybe money is not a real thing to North Carolina, but you’re paying 10 million of it in this economy, paying Bill Belichick to just, I don’t know, kind of mess around on your dime on your time that I don’t know. I thought North Carolina was a prouder program than that.”

Apparently, at least vocally, Belichick has assured to stop the bridge from burning. “We’re going to work through it and work our way out of it. Keep working every week to prepare for the next team and that’s what we’re going to do,” assured the Tar Heels head coach after tasting a 28-point loss against Clemson. This made fans and analysts hopeful about Belichick fixing things. But a controversy stirred things up.

It kicked off with an Inside Carolina post claiming from unnamed sources that UNC’s social media skipped celebrating Drake Maye’s big night against the Bills because staff were told by Bill Belichick to steer clear of anything Patriots-related. A few weeks back, the North Carolina head coach said, “It’s clear I’m not welcome there around their facility. And so they’re not welcome at ours. It’s pretty simple.” So, Belichick appears focused on the wrong things, and none of it is helping the Tar Heels get better.