Belichick’s Two-Year Players Paying Defensive Dividends
By David Glenn
During Bill Belichick’s first season at North Carolina, the Tar Heels’ continuity factor was near zero.
Heading into the team’s 2025 opener against TCU, Belichick and most of his staff had spent only about eight months around a large majority of their players, then had an incredibly short window to prepare the 20 transfers they added after the spring semester. Those late additions (including starting quarterback Gio Lopez) missed UNC’s spring drills, and NCAA rules limit player-coach interactions during the summer months, so their only full-scale, on-field preparation came via an August crash course of sorts, and that showed in the Tar Heels’ embarrassing 48-14 home loss to the Horned Frogs.
Carolina’s closest thing to continuity a year ago came in the forms of linebacker Khmori House and cornerback Thaddeus Dixon. They had followed defensive coordinator Steve Belichick from Washington to UNC, so they previously had a full year learning, practicing and executing his scheme for the Huskies. Unsurprisingly, House and Dixon were two of the Tar Heels’ best players last season, during the team’s disappointing 4-8 campaign.
This year, when UNC again faced TCU in its opener, the Tar Heels’ personnel continuity was much higher — especially on defense (see player-by-player details at bottom) — and that single factor played an enormous role in the Heels’ narrow 15-10 victory over the Horned Frogs in Ireland.
“Certainly we didn’t play competitively enough last year,” Belichick said after the game. “But this year, I mean, these guys came out with a whole different attitude, and they were going to fight for 60 minutes, and they did.”
Belichick estimated that UNC spent eight or nine days preparing for TCU. In other words, the first eight months of 2026 involved more generalized preparation for the entire season, but the eight or nine days immediately before the game in Dublin were dedicated specifically to the Horned Frogs.
That TCU-specific preparation paid off with a victory.
The Carolina defense had a much different challenge against TCU this year. The Horned Frogs had a new offensive coordinator. They also had a new quarterback, an Ivy League transfer who wasn’t much of a running threat but also wasn’t nearly as polished with his downfield passing as the guy (NFL prospect Josh Hoover, now at Indiana) the Heels faced at Kenan Stadium last year. The Frogs also were missing their top wide receiver in Ireland.
It’s one thing to know those details about a specific opponent’s offense. The next step is coming up with a game plan to limit that offense, a task squarely in Bill Belichick’s genius zone. (Steve remains out on an indefinite medical leave.) The final and most important step, of course, is getting 11 defensive players to execute the details of that game plan, snap after snap, in a hard-hitting but high-football-IQ manner.
That’s exactly what happened in Ireland, amidst some fun chatter about leprechauns, horseshoes and four-leaf clovers, but luck had nothing to do with it.
“This goes all the way back to preseason workouts, spring practice, summer workouts, training camp,” Belichick said. “It’s all pointed to getting ready for the season, not necessarily just one game, but getting ready for the season. And then the last eight to nine days, we poured a lot into TCU.”
Interestingly, among the 13 UNC defenders who played the most snaps against TCU this year, 10 (77 percent) have been with Belichick for the entirety of his roughly 20-month tenure in Chapel Hill.
Jaiden Patterson played all 71 defensive snaps against the Horned Frogs at one cornerback position, and fellow UNC returnees Kaleb Cost (four tackles) and Tre Miller rotated at the other corner spot and/or helped in nickel situations. Leroy Jackson (eight tackles), Isaiah Johnson (four tackles) and Xavier Lewis (seven tackles, 4.5 for loss, two sacks) formed a highly productive three-man rotation at tackle. All-ACC end Melkart Abou Jaoude made one of the biggest plays of the day, a strip-sack that resulted in a TCU turnover. Greg Smith (six tackles and a pass breakup) rarely left the field at one safety position, while Coleman Bryson and Peyton Waters rotated at the other.
Kaleb Cost, University of North Carolina football v TCU, Aviva Stadium, Dublin, Ireland — Saturday, August 29, 2026
All 10 of those defensive contributors were at UNC last year, too. The only defensive star against TCU who wasn’t with the Tar Heels in 2025 was linebacker Derek McDonald (game-high 11 tackles), a Syracuse transfer now in his sixth year of college football and his fourth season as a Power Four starter.
“Good team defense,” Belichick said. “It’s not one guy that does it. If you play good team defense and force a runner to go, someone is there to tackle him. So everybody just has to take care of their responsibility.”
After the game, when Belichick was asked how this year’s Tar Heels are better than last year’s Tar Heels, the coach didn’t think in broad terms. He answered in a very specific manner, based on what he had just seen against TCU, and the first item on his list spoke volumes.
“We were better on fourth down defensively,” Belichick said, “that was a big thing.”
UNC’s offense went 1-for-1 on fourth down against TCU, and that conversion came on a non-play that generated an over-the-top (by his standards) scream and first-down gesture from Belichick on the sidelines. With the Tar Heels trying to preserve a victory in the final minute, sixth-year senior quarterback Billy Edwards Jr. barked the signals on a situational play (designed to draw the opponent offside) the Heels had practiced many times. Seventh-year senior center Christo Kelly saw the TCU nose tackle jump early, into the neutral zone, and his quick-twitch helmet-pat response assured the yellow flag, the resulting five-yard penalty (in a fourth-and-one situation) and the Carolina victory.
UNC’s defense, meanwhile, stopped TCU on four of its five fourth-down efforts. Again, the Tar Heels had the edge on the situational football plays Belichick loves, just as they had the edge in penalties (three versus 11 for TCU), mental mistakes and overall execution.
In the second quarter, with TCU in UNC territory, Smith broke up a fourth-down passing attempt by the Horned Frogs for a turnover on downs. In the third quarter, with TCU at UNC’s five-yard line, Johnson and Lewis combined to stuff a fourth-and-one rushing attempt. Late in the fourth quarter, with TCU at UNC’s 10-yard line, Lewis darted toward the Horned Frogs’ quarterback, whose rushed fourth-down throw into the end zone was well-covered by Bryson and others.
Each of those crucial fourth-down defensive plays saw a second-year Belichick player make an enormous contribution to the oh-so-close Carolina victory.
In the end, every play in the UNC-TCU game mattered.
The surging player-continuity factor on Belichick’s gritty and intelligent defense certainly did, too.
Most Defensive Snaps (TCU)
Snaps — Player (Year At UNC/Under Belichick), Previous School
71 — sixth-year LB Derek McDonald (1st/1st), Syracuse
71 — junior CB Jaiden Patterson (3rd/2nd)
68 — redshirt sophomore S Greg Smith (2nd/2nd), Florida
58 — redshirt sophomore DT Leroy Jackson (3rd/2nd)
57 — senior CB Kaleb Cost (4th/2nd)
54 — redshirt sophomore DE Jaylen Harvey (1st/1st), Penn State
53 — fifth-year DE Melkart Abou Jaoude (2nd/2nd), Delaware
53 — sophomore DT Xavier Lewis (2nd/2nd)
49 — fifth-year DT Isaiah Johnson (2nd/2nd), Arizona
46 — redshirt junior CB Tre Miller (4th/2nd)
42 — redshirt sophomore S Peyton Waters (2nd/2nd), Washington
41 — junior LB Peyton Seelman (1st/1st), Richmond
33 — fifth-year S Coleman Bryson (2nd/2nd), Minnesota
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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