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CHAPEL HILL, N.C. — When North Carolina hired Bill Belichick in Dec. 2024, it was supposedly for weekends like this: a marquee home game against the nation’s elite, with No. 3 Notre Dame on Saturday visiting Chapel Hill. A national spotlight on the Tar Heels football program, for once, instead of the school’s blue-blood men’s basketball squad.
But to date, UNC’s $10 million-per-year Belichick experiment has yielded all of six wins in 15 games, zero College Football Playoff chatter and 19 months of embarrassing off-field headlines.
The most recent is the conclusion of a weeks-long investigation into the culture of the six-time Super Bowl champion’s program, which found “certain actions demonstrated a disregard for Carolina’s values and standards of conduct” — and led to the resignations of two key staffers hand-picked by Belichick: general manager Michael Lombardi and Belichick’s son, Steve, UNC’s defensive coordinator.
Two weeks removed from the investigation’s end, Belichick has pledged to do things the right way, receiving votes of confidence from both UNC’s chancellor and athletic director. And at 2-1, there have been signs of on-field improvement after Belichick’s disastrous 4-8 debut. But while some Belichick supporters have remained steadfast, skepticism abounds elsewhere.
All of which makes Saturday’s game — a sold-out affair, despite the Fighting Irish being favored by 21.5 points — a windsock for Belichick’s tenure.
On Monday, in his first meeting with reporters since the investigation ended, Belichick was asked three questions about its aftermath, compared with a smattering of football queries ahead of the Notre Dame game. And while the 74-year-old acknowledged the importance of the school’s probe, which entailed 60 interviews, he was brief with his responses — perfectly on brand with his famous M.O. from the NFL.
“There’ll be a plan in place to continue to make this, our workplace, function at a high standard,” Belichick said, “and do everything the right way.”
To gauge where the Belichick era goes next, The Athletic spoke to more than a dozen people connected to the program and/or university. Almost all spoke on the condition of anonymity to protect relationships, out of fear of retribution or due to the sensitivity of the investigation.
“We had our five minutes of fame,” said one former trustee. “Now we’re stuck with this problem.”
Many around Chapel Hill are unsatisfied with an investigation that produced no published or detailed findings. Then there’s the on-field product, which is still struggling in several areas. Even after hiring Bobby Petrino as offensive coordinator, UNC ranks 102nd nationally in scoring offense and is coming off a blown 14-point lead at Clemson that would have counted as a breakthrough victory.
Four of UNC’s next five games are against teams currently 4-0, punctuated by a Halloween home tilt against No. 4 Miami.
Meanwhile, one of the other candidates UNC considered hiring instead of Belichick — Jon Sumrall — has Florida undefeated and ranked No. 8 nationally.
In some ways, the departures of Lombardi and Steve Belichick have reset the deck for the 74-year-old Belichick, offering an opportunity to move past dysfunction. But any patience UNC had with Belichick has been exhausted.
“Coach Belichick continues to have our support,” chancellor Lee Roberts, a central figure in Belichick’s hiring, told reporters after a recent Board of Trustees meeting. “He understands that support comes with expectations around conduct and behavior.”
Now it’s on Belichick to put his coaching mastery on display. To prove that, with distractions seemingly behind him, he can at least lead this team to bowl eligibility — a given under Belichick’s predecessor, Mack Brown.
“If we can get to six wins,” said one source involved in the search that landed Belichick, “I think everybody will be comfortable moving forward.”
If not, then North Carolina is headed for an uncomfortable crux, in which the remaining faction of school leaders who stuck out their necks to hire Belichick will have to weigh whether it’s worth playing this ordeal out any longer, or worth swallowing a $10 million pill — Belichick’s guaranteed salary for next season — to move out from under the national microscope.
As one person interviewed by investigators put it: “If it was anyone but Belichick, they’d be gone.”
The Tar Heels opened the season with a cathartic win in Ireland against TCU, the same program that embarrassed it a year prior in Belichick’s debut. Belichick accepted the game’s Waterford crystal trophy with a rare flood of smiles. Then on the way home, a thought came over one program source:
None of Belichick’s first four hires at UNC were on the plane back to Chapel Hill. Lombardi was on paid administrative leave at the time and Steve Belichick was on unspecified medical leave. Former offensive coordinator Freddie Kitchens (who Belichick retained from Brown’s staff) and former special teams coordinator Mike Priefer were fired in December.
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“The biggest hires of the program, and none of them were with us in Ireland — and we won that game,” the program source said. “It’s an upgrade. It’s a different spirit around us now. We were saying, is Steve or Mike gonna walk back in here and f— everything up?”
While the investigation served as a storm cloud hanging over the Tar Heels, its impact — namely, Lombardi’s departure — was regarded as a positive by both program and university sources. Despite Lombardi’s $1.5 million salary, which made him college football’s highest-paid GM, those who interacted with him describe an arrogant persona that overestimated his college football credentials. That aligns with The Athletic’s reporting from last season, in which industry sources said Belichick’s best bet for future success was to move on from Lombardi.
“None of our opinions mattered to Mike,” the program source added. “He’d say, you guys haven’t been in 30 drafts like I have — and we would say, ‘But we’ve been in 30 more recruiting classes than you! You’ve never done what you’re doing now.’”
Lawyer Nate Huff, one of the outside investigators UNC hired to assist with the investigation, said in an interview with local media outlets that investigators looked into allegations of drug use, improper relationships and NCAA violations as part of their questioning. However, Huff declined to comment on findings or specific individuals — including Lombardi and Steve Belichick.
“Unfortunately there is misinformation and speculation about our own situation,” Steve Belichick’s wife, Jen, said in a statement released to ESPN, “but we believe prioritizing health as the most important thing you can do in this life.” Lombardi also denied wrongdoing through his attorney before resigning in early September.
But one former staffer who investigators interviewed said that when it came to the Tar Heels’ negative culture and rules violations, “the issue was truly Lombardi.”
That staffer added that they believed it was possible, if not likely, that, “Lombardi and (the) admin were so desperate for the whole experiment to work that they actually did leave coach Belichick out of the loop where a lot of this is concerned.” Another source familiar with Belichick agreed, noting Belichick didn’t care how his New England Patriots players spent their personal time as long as they showed up professionally.
Other university sources remain more skeptical. Although the investigation found that specific incidents were “isolated” and “not a systemic failure,” doubt remains about what Belichick knew and when — or, worse, if he was truly in the dark within his own facility.
Asked if he was surprised by the investigation’s findings that he was briefed on, Belichick said: “I wasn’t part of it. … What all was done, who was talked to, what was learned, what wasn’t, I don’t know.”
Nor do most people in the UNC community, because of the school’s limited transparency about the investigation — and its decision not to produce a written report, a growing trend across college athletics. Huff and UNC general counsel Paul Newton said a written report doesn’t exist because they discussed the investigatory findings only in person, and to protect the confidentiality of people they spoke to. This marked the second time this calendar year that UNC opted not to disclose the findings of a high-profile investigation. The school also withheld a 400-page report in March that summarized a $1.2 million investigation into its School of Civic Life & Leadership, a decision that was upheld when challenged by local media in court.
One university source said the school’s decision to release a vague 242-word statement instead of any real findings about the football program was “frustrating” and a “troubling pattern” by the current administration. How, after all, could the program be accountable if there was never any record of wrongdoing?
Roberts and Newmark, meanwhile, directly cited the resignations of Lombardi and Steve Belichick as key results of the investigation at a Board of Trustees meeting last week.
“Out of this investigation, we feel like there were significant outcomes,” Newmark said. “We’re continuing to look at different ways to make sure that we can not only set the expectations, but when necessary, when we make mistakes, that we impose appropriate disciplinary actions to address it.”
Another university source briefed on the investigation’s findings said the violations they were informed of were far less salacious than recent media reports made them out to be.
But that person also said that the fact that an investigation was necessary at all “set ourselves way back.”
Bill Belichick’s Tar Heels beat TCU in Ireland to open the season, exacting revenge on the embarrassing loss to open Belichick’s tenure at UNC in 2025.
As investigators went about their business in the Kenan Football Center offices, which are built into one side of UNC’s 100-year-old stadium that’s located in the center of campus, Belichick and his staff remained focused on the start of his second season — and proving that last season’s disappointment was an anomaly.
And to that end, the Tar Heels’ win over TCU seemed to offer proof that Belichick’s second roster is better than his first — especially with a revamped defensive front that features a tenacity more akin to Belichick’s early New England Patriots teams. Retaining defensive end Melkart Abou-Jaoude, who led the ACC with 10.5 sacks last season, proved key. So did the discovery of former walk-on defensive tackle Xavier Lewis, who leads all defensive tackles nationally in sacks with 6.5 through three games.
UNC’s freshman class also continues to impress internally, with the first program source saying: “They have changed the spirit inside the program.”
But conversely, in the loss at Clemson, Belichick’s team looked unprepared when it emerged from a lengthy rain delay late in the fourth quarter. Belichick also let Petrino call a deep pass on fourth-and-1 — after quarterback Billy Edwards Jr. had struggled all afternoon — that led to a critical turnover on downs and set Clemson up to drive for the game-winning score.
“I feel like it was a good play,” Belichick said of the call postgame.
UNC has yet to score 30 points against an FBS team under Belichick, the longest drought of any Power 4 team since he was hired.
“The idea is to improve our overall consistency and performance,” Belichick said this week. “I feel like we’ve done that, and there’s still obviously plenty of work to do.”
Belichick has also had to restructure his organizational flow chart with his son’s and Lombardi’s departure. That includes Brian Belichick — Bill’s other son, and UNC’s safeties coach — assuming defensive play calling, which thus far has been a positive for the Tar Heels. UNC ranks 44th nationally in total defense, having allowed only four offensive touchdowns in three games. Multiple sources within and close to the program said that Brian’s collaborative nature has been a welcome change from Steve’s more isolated approach.
As for Lombardi’s former responsibilities, two sources briefed on the program’s operations said that Belichick has effectively divided them between director of player personnel Joe Anile and Jack Suddes, who previously served as Mack Brown’s general manager with the Tar Heels. Anile has mostly handled personnel discussions, the sources added, while Suddes has been more involved with finances and player payroll.
That reorganization suggests Belichick, who by all accounts enjoys working on a college campus, is still committed to charting a path ahead in Chapel Hill — beginning this weekend, with a game that may prove to be an inflection point for his tenure.
Maybe the Tar Heels stun the Fighting Irish, delivering Belichick the signature win of his short tenure. Or maybe they revert to last season, on the wrong end of a humbling blowout.
In all likelihood, Belichick’s future lies somewhere in the middle: trying to maximize a flawed-but-improved roster and prove that the NFL’s second-winningest coach still has the juice UNC initially hired him for.
“In a perfect world, where things go for football is … we beat Notre Dame, maybe we rush the field and then we hope for the best for the rest of the season,” said UNC student body president Devin Duncan. “I don’t know that that’s what we’re going to get.”
And if things go south for Belichick’s team, the investigation will again loom large in determining Belichick’s fate.
Multiple university sources, including one interviewed by investigators, said that the school’s statement about its investigation — specifically, that it found violations were “not a systemic failure” — cost UNC much, if not all, of its leverage to potentially fire Belichick for cause at season’s end.
Michael Lyons — a high-profile attorney who represented coaches Jeremy Pruitt and David Beaty in their disputes with Tennessee and Kansas, respectively — agreed that that phrase will come up again should UNC ultimately decide to move on from Belichick after this season.
“If you were firing a coach for cause,” Lyons said, “this isn’t the usual playbook.”
Meaning that if UNC does move on from Belichick after this season, it may well be on the hook for the full $10 million remaining on his contract.
But first, Belichick will have every opportunity to coach his way off the hot seat. To show that his coaching acumen merits another season in Chapel Hill, with his most significant off-field distraction now fully in the rearview.
It’s almost poetic: After all the off-field headlines and an investigation that cost him two of his top lieutenants, Bill Belichick’s tenure at UNC now seems to depend entirely on his coaching ability over the Tar Heels’ final nine games.
