North Carolina Tar Heels football coach Bill Belichick is now 2-3 in his debut season at the collegiate level after dropping a 38-10 loss to the Clemson Tigers. Somehow, the game wasn’t as close as the final score indicated.
The beating was so bad that at halftime, with UNC down 35-3, Pro Football Talk’s Mike Florio made one of the most damning claims possible about Belichick and Tar Heels football GM Mike Lombardi’s roster-building:
These North Carolina players aren’t FBS caliber.
“The first college football game between a coach who has won multiple Super Bowls and a coach who has won multiple championships since 1993 is going very well for one of the coaches, not so well for the other,” Florio wrote.
“The situation underscores the basic disparity in talent. Belichick and G.M. Mike Lombardi brought in more than 70 new players. Those players just aren’t good enough to compete with FBS schools.”
Note that Florio said “FBS” and not “Power 4.” Through the Tar Heels’ first three Power 4 games against Clemson, the UCF Knights, and the TCU Horned Frogs, they’ve been outscored by 87 points. They did beat the Charlotte 49ers 20-3. UNC also defeated the FCS Richmond Spiders.
Still, the rest of the season could prove Florio right. Charlotte might not have a roster that can compete with most FBS teams, and that could prove to be North Carolina’s only win of the season. Charlotte has only beaten the FCS Monmouth Hawks, and it was in a 42-35 shootout.
UNC heads into its second bye week, just two weeks after its first. The Tar Heels’ next game is against the Cal Golden Bears on October 17 in Berkeley, California.