UNC’s Belichick Experiment: Two Huge Second-Year Twists
By David Glenn
As North Carolina continues Year Two of its Bill Belichick experiment, the Tar Heels are counting heavily on two major changes from the disastrous approach that led directly to the legendary coach’s 4-8 debacle of a debut in 2025.
First, in early January, Belichick hired an offensive coordinator, Bobby Petrino, who — unlike predecessor Freddy Kitchens, the tight-ends-coach holdover from Mack Brown’s staff — actually has a long and impressive track record for calling plays and inspiring productive offenses.
Second, like virtually every other program in major college football, the players on UNC’s high-turnover roster have at least a chance to build some on-the-field chemistry together during the offseason this year, something that simply never happened last summer because of the Tar Heels’ revolving-door roster chaos.
“Last year, we didn’t have any player-run practices,” Belichick said last week at the annual ACC Kickoff media event. “We couldn’t actually line up a team and run it against another team without the coaches being out there, because we didn’t have anybody that knew enough — on either side of the ball — to do that.
“This year, these guys have done that all spring and all summer. They go out there on their own and have seven-on-seven and do drills and all that because we have enough experienced guys to do that. The culture is a lot different, work ethic is different. Not taking anything away from the guys that were here, but compared to a year ago, we know a lot more about what we’re doing, how to do it, and our culture is a lot different.”
That’s music to the ears of Carolina football fans, who last year suffered through the Tar Heels’ worst season since their 3-9 and 2-9 campaigns in 2017 and 2018, at the end of the Larry Fedora era.
Belichick’s first UNC team posted embarrassing performances against TCU (48-14), UCF (34-9), Clemson (38-10) and NC State (42-19). Under Kitchens, the Tar Heels averaged just 19 points per game for the season, a number that ranked 63rd among the 68 teams competing at the Power Four level.
North Carolina head coach Bill Belichick speaks at the 2026 ACC Kickoff in Charlotte, N.C., Friday, July 17, 2026. (Nell Redmond/ACC Photo)
Soon after Belichick (Dec. 11) and general manager Michael Lombardi (Dec. 17) were hired in 2024, they inadvertently planted the seeds for their first-year failures. Belichick, who became a National Football League icon during his 49 years in that league, had no previous experience on a college staff. Lombardi had worked as UNLV’s recruiting coordinator back in the early 1980s, 30-plus years before a tidal wave of changes hit major college sports.
Although both Belichick and Lombardi have offered a variety of explanations/excuses for their first-year failures, the reality is that they badly miscalculated the modern realities of the college game.
Working under the same rules, and after inheriting a program coming off back-to-back 4-8 seasons, and competing without an above-average quarterback, first-year Wake Forest coach Jake Dickert — hired about a week after Belichick, but coming off four years of portal/Name-Image-Likeness (NIL) experience as Washington State’s head coach — led the Demon Deacons to a stellar 9-4 campaign in 2025.
In the teams’ head-to-head matchup a year ago, Wake beat the Tar Heels 28-12 in Winston-Salem, after which Belichick (barely) accepted but quickly bulldozed through Dickert’s midfield postgame handshake. Despite dealing with his own complicated set of circumstances, Dickert was well on his way to posting nine victories, the most for a first-year coach in Wake football history.
Like Belichick, Dickert couldn’t find an elite quarterback on short notice in December 2024. He found a competent and experienced QB (sixth-year senior Robby Ashford), though, someone who had previously competed in the Southeastern Conference and who could enroll in January 2025, go through spring practice, direct offseason workouts and help build the sort of healthy, behind-the-curtain chemistry and culture that every successful program needs.
Unlike in the NFL, player-led practices matter a lot in the college game. Last year, when NCAA rules allowed two transfer windows (December/January and April) in football, UNC had such a high volume of incoming/outgoing players — including at the all-important quarterback position — that Belichick’s first spring practice in Chapel Hill ultimately didn’t serve as much of a foundation at all.
Star linebacker Amare Campbell left the Tar Heels after spring practice. (He went on to earn All-Big Ten honors at Penn State.) A December quarterback signee, Purdue transfer Ryan Browne, used the April portal window to return to the Boilermakers. (He started all 12 games there last season.) The Tar Heels’ starting QB last season, Gio Lopez, didn’t arrive until after spring practice. Their other top QB, Max Johnson, missed spring practice while recovering from an injury.
That quarterback chaos and heavy roster turnover ultimately made player-run practices virtually impossible for the Tar Heels last summer.
This time, four scholarship quarterbacks — Wisconsin transfer Billy Edwards Jr. (a sixth-year senior), Texas A&M transfer Miles O’Neill (a redshirt sophomore), redshirt freshman Au’Tori Newkirk and highly touted true freshman Travis Burgess — went through spring drills with the Heels, giving them the opportunity to both learn Petrino’s system and carry that knowledge into summer workouts.
Because NCAA rules severely restrict player-coach interactions from the end of spring practice (typically late April) to the beginning of preseason practice (very late July), there is a roughly three-month-long period during which the players have to decide whether and how to supplement the eight hours per week of mandatory activities (e.g., video review, position meetings, non-contact skill instruction, walk-throughs) outlined by the coaching staff.
UNC wide receiver Jordan Shipp, a 2025 honorable mention All-ACC player who led the team in receptions, receiving yards and touchdowns last season, said he is among the Tar Heels who has been organizing offseason workouts this year.
“It’s probably like twice a week now,” Shipp said. “We’ll have the o-line and d-line doing their thing, and then the skill players will go seven-on-seven. We just get good-on-good, rotating guys, getting the different quarterbacks with different receivers, things like that.
“It’s more of a player-led culture now, us being able to hold each other accountable and not have the bickering back and forth.”
“There’s no magic pill that you can take for success; everything is done through hard work,” center Christo Kelly said. “You’ve gotta be able to lean into it. You’ve gotta be a great teammate. The biggest thing is earning the respect of your teammates. The training is hard; it’s supposed to be hard.
“Ultimately, the biggest thing is we’re focused on the process, we’re focused on today, we’re focused on winning today. Do that over time and success will come.”
With preseason practice almost here and UNC’s season opener against TCU awaiting on Aug. 29 in Dublin, Ireland, Belichick said he feels much better about the state of his program.
“We’re so far ahead of where we were last year, when we kind of started all over in training camp,” Belichick said. “This year, we’ve got a much better base to build off of. … We’re just going to keep grinding away every day. That’s what we try to do, is string good days together and keep stacking them up and see where that takes us.”
David Glenn (DavidGlennShow.com, @DavidGlennShow) is an award-winning author, broadcaster, editor, entrepreneur, publisher, speaker, writer and university lecturer (now at UNC Wilmington) who has covered sports in North Carolina since 1987.
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