With a mostly new coaching staff and a completely remade roster in the fold, the North Carolina Tar Heels are rightfully one of the biggest stories and most polarizing teams of the 2025 college football offseason. Never before has the spotlight shined so brightly on the Tar Heels football program, and with all due respect to all of the additions on both the roster and personnel side of things, that’s due to one man… Bill Belichick.
Bill Belichick, a 6-time Super Bowl winning head coach in the NFL who turned 73 in April, stunned the entire football world this past November when he took the job in Chapel Hill. And even though it’s been just about six months since Belichick signed on the dotted line, there’s still a great deal of mystery regarding what football fans should expect from his squad in the first year of his tenure.
Even the most plugged-in individuals – rival coaches around the ACC – are still mostly shrugging their shoulders when asked about what Belichick’s first year at North Carolina will look like, both on the field and off the field.
“They’ve been vocal about criticizing other programs on how they spend and evaluate. There’s talk about how they’re going to become an advanced, pro-level scouting program that implements NIL better. We’ll see,” one opposing ACC coach told Athlon Sports. “We do expect a better overall haul from these guys in high school recruiting than from Mack [Brown], at least until the novelty wears off or Bill gets a bad reputation.”
Unfortunately for Belichick, his reputation seems to have already taken a hit in recent months. Questions and concerns regarding the involvement of his 24-year-old girlfriend, Jordan Hudson, has begun to scare bettors away from the Tar Heels. According to Max Meyer of The Athletic, public support among bettors for North Carolina has plummeted since Matt Baker’s April 15th story about Hudson’s involvement in the program was published on The Athletic. From that date, “89 percent of bets on Carolina’s 7.5 win total at BetMGM have come in on the under.”
Similarly, at Hard Rock Bet, 75 percent of bets have been on North Carolina’s win total have been on the under since early May.
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But just because there’s plenty of noise off the field, it doesn’t mean we won’t see a well-coached football team on the field when their season begins on September 1st when the TCU Horned Frogs come to Chapel Hill. In a primetime slot, the Tar Heels will have the chance to make a good first impression, but at this point, there are certainly more questions than answers.
“Honestly,” another ACC coach said, “no one really has any idea what to expect on the field when they start this season.”
This uncertainty stems from plenty of important questions left unanswered. Will South Alabama transfer Gio Lopez be the starting quarterback, or will highly touted redshirt freshman Bryce Baker win the job? Was Freddie Kitchens the right hire for offensive coordinator? Will a defense that is going to be made up almost entirely of transfers be able to gel quick enough for Carolina to be a real threat in the ACC right away?
And of course, the biggest question is whether or not Bill Belichick has enough left in the tank to be able to oversee a college football program in the NIL/transfer portal era.