North Carolina Tar Heels football coach Bill Belichick may need to count his days in Chapel Hill. With the team falling to 2-5 after a 17-16 loss to the Virginia Cavaliers, Belichick’s program is now 0-3 in ACC play.
It’s not expected to get better. No one is predicting a revival in the final five games. They’re predicting who will be the head coach in 2026, making “Chapel Bill” a failed, but short-lived, one-year experiment.
AllSportsPeople’ Bill Bender pitched a radical solution to the Belichick problem: hiring Brian Kelly after his recent firing from the LSU Tigers.
“This is the one potential ACC job worth watching, and it would generate headlines. Bill Belichick has been a disaster in Chapel Hill to this point. The Tar Heels are 2-5, and the 73-year-old coach also is a candidate to move on after this season,” Bender wrote.
“North Carolina could hire Kelly, who coached against ACC schools for several seasons as part of the five-game arrangement with Notre Dame. Kelly might not be able to win a national championship at North Carolina, but it would be a spot where he could string together four or five solid seasons like Mack Brown – who compiled a 44-33 record from 2019-24.
“This would be a huge win for the Tar Heels -- as the program would put the Belichick era in the rear-view mirror the second Kelly steps on campus.”
Brian Kelly’s character has even bigger question marks than Bill Belichick’s
Football-wise, Kelly is an objectively good hire for a team like UNC. Or any ACC team, for that matter. Kelly brought the Notre Dame Fighting Irish to the four-team College Football Playoff in 2012/2013. He might be capable of getting more than half of the ACC to a conference championship game. Getting over that hump was his issue at LSU. He strayed further from it every year since his arrival in Baton Rouge.
The issue isn’t coaching ability. It’s character. If the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill doesn’t appreciate dealing with Belichick’s family antics, would they want to deal with Kelly? There’s no question that Kelly is a better fit in the Tar Heel State than in Louisiana, but that doesn’t mean he’s the best option available.
Consecutive splashy hires, after a controversy-free Mack Brown tenure, would be risky business for UNC.