The North Carolina Tar Heels looked like a bad high school team on Monday night. One of the most anticipated events of the season, Bill Belichick's home college debut in front of legends of the school, was an absolute, unmitigated disaster for coach and players.
UNC got off to a great start, getting the ball back immediately after an impressive seven-play, 83-yard scoring drive. From then on, the TCU Horned Frogs rattled off 41 unanswered. It was ugly, and it, according to ESPN's Bill Connelly, portends doom for Belichick this season.
Belichick didn't have a great chance to really hit the recruiting trail, but that doesn't seem like a strong suit for him anyway. The team just doesn't have talent, so managing the "cap" is not going to matter. Maybe it will eventually, but in 2025, it won't.
"2025 doesn't look like it's going to go particularly well. The roster Belichick and his NFL staff compiled this season simply doesn't have enough talent, especially in the trenches, to aim for anything higher than 6-6 in year one," Connelly said.
"This isn't the NFL, and you can't draft talent," he said, which is also something Belichick struggled with in his later years in the NFL. "There's still a recruiting element to the college game that goes with all the cap math. We'll see what happens in future seasons, but in 2025 it looks like the college game, with all its quirks and oddities, is going to get the best of the best coach in NFL history."
Even with NIL and the transfer portal reshaping college football to look more like the pros, a pro coach with seven Super Bowls couldn't even muster a competitive outing in Week 1.