UNC Football Catch-all | Bill Belichick Era underway

[CFordUNC]

You are being very, very naive if you think Bill Belichick wouldn't be the hottest name in coaching in December 2025 if he led UNC to 11 wins and/or a playoff spot. Every team in the SEC/Big10 with an opening would be getting out the big guns to hire him away. A performance like that at UNC would open huge eyes, and he would be on national TV every week with huge ratings if that actually happened.

But I put the odds of that at under 5%.

Maybe, and lord knows I’d love to be in a situation where we’d have to find out because it would be awesome for UNC, but I think you are drastically over estimating the number of big-time football schools who would have an appetite for hiring a 75-year-old football coach and paying him the requisite $13-15M+ it would take to get him. Hiring old retreads seem to be a UNC-specific affliction lately.

I don’t see what winning 10 or 11 games with one of the easiest schedules in all of P4 (he’d be the second UNC coach in the last decade who did just that, in fact) would do for his candidacy that being the greatest NFL coach of all time with six Super Bowl rings wouldn’t have already done. But obviously this is just my opinion, and I’m sure a lot of folks disagree. That’s okay.

 

[SnoopRob]

lol. Not one single solitary NFL team nor any other college team besides North Carolina wanted to hire Bill Belichick, so I can assure you no SEC team is going to have any interest in doing so no matter how many games we win. We are all hoping this works out well for UNC, and it very well may, but unless or until it does, every single team in the NFL and every other major college team is laughing at the fact that we fired one 74-year-old has-been whom nobody wanted when we hired him, to hire another 74 year-old has-been who, you guessed it, nobody else wanted either. Maybe it will work out this time! We’ve got about $10 million reasons it better work.

He obviously wasn't getting much attention from NFL teams, but I'd venture there are a number of college teams who would have taken a chance on Belichick if they had an opening this offseason and he'd have returned the interest.

There's certainly a small risk with Belichick (largely some wasted years), but he is the greatest coach in NFL history for a reason and that is the potential upside of the hire.

 

[Zoo_View]

10. 11 or more and we may have to get out the checkbook - which is astonishing given he makes 10M.

If he wins 11, pay him more!

 

[uncsig]

From September 21 through October 16 we play once.

I get the point but by going from a Sunday to a Friday, you could also say that from September 7 through September 19 we play only once [even though we actually play three games in a row on the 6th, 13th and 20th].

 

[CFordUNC]

He obviously wasn't getting much attention from NFL teams, but I'd venture there are a number of college teams who would have taken a chance on Belichick if they had an opening this offseason and he'd have returned the interest.

There's certainly a small risk with Belichick (largely some wasted years), but he is the greatest coach in NFL history for a reason and that is the potential upside of the hire.

Yeah I hear ya. Y’all are probably right and I’m probably (hopefully, even) wrong. I just don’t think that BB was some hot commodity to anyone for the same reasons Mack wasn’t when we hired him again. The end of Belichick’s tenure at New England was a disaster after Brady left. And Bill is something like 20 games below .500 as a head coach in his career without Brady. I’m not one of those dingbats who attributes all of the Patriots’ success to Brady and not BB by any means. But I also don’t think that the significant sample size that we have of him sans-Brady is impressive, and I think the way his tenure ended in NE raises a lot of red flags for NFL owners and, I’d to imagine, major college AD’s. Heck, our very own AD didn’t even want to hire Belichick- it was done completely behind his back.

So I just have a hard time believing that any major SEC or Big 10 school would all of a sudden be beating down his door at 75-years-old, but I’ve been wrong often and will continue to be wrong often!

 

[CFordUNC]

Assuming this Belichick experiment goes well and he’s here that long, my decently realistic hope is that we win 8 or 9 this year, show a ton of promise, rack up in the portal in the offseason, win 10 against a much tougher schedule next year, set ourselves up for another great portal haul, and then capitalize in year 3 with a bonafide ACC title and playoff run when we play what should be another insanely easy schedule (only tough game would appear to be FSU and that’s at home). And then Bill calls it a career, rides off into the sunset, and leaves UNC with one hell of an envious foundation for the next head coach to enter a solidly built cupboard and strong program infrastructure like was left for Carl Torbush in 1998.

My “years of Carolina football fandom have broken my spirit” pessimism says we win 6 or 7 this year, don’t have a great portal haul, then win 6 or 7 again next year against a tough schedule, and we’re doing the coaching search thing all over again on a down note.

 

[Peppers49]

UNC is the perfect type of program to take a risk on Belichick at this stage of his coaching career. If it works out then great, ideally he’s fixed some of the “infrastructure” problems that have plagued the program for decades, wins some games in the process, and generally sets us on the right path. If it turns out that he’s truly washed up and the whole thing flops, who cares? The stakes here are (relatively speaking) pretty low anyways. Not like we haven’t been in that spot many times before for various reasons. At least we tried something different.

In comparison, big time SEC and Big 10 programs don’t need to take that risk. They already have a culture and infrastructure that’s ready to embrace big time football and have better options when they have to make new coaching hires.

 

[CFordUNC]

UNC is the perfect type of program to take a risk on Belichick at this stage of his coaching career. If it works out then great, ideally he’s fixed some of the “infrastructure” problems that have plagued the program for decades, wins some games in the process, and generally sets us on the right path. If it turns out that he’s truly washed up and the whole thing flops, who cares? The stakes here are (relative speaking) pretty low anyways. Not like we haven’t been in that spot many times before for various reasons. At least we tried something different.

Totally great points, for sure. Agree 100%

 

[Calheel]

UNC is the perfect type of program to take a risk on Belichick at this stage of his coaching career. If it works out then great, ideally he’s fixed some of the “infrastructure” problems that have plagued the program for decades, wins some games in the process, and generally sets us on the right path. If it turns out that he’s truly washed up and the whole thing flops, who cares? The stakes here are (relative speaking) pretty low anyways. Not like we haven’t been in that spot many times before for various reasons. At least we tried something different.

In comparison, big time SEC and Big 10 programs don’t need to take that risk. They already have a culture and infrastructure that’s ready to embrace big time football and have better options when they have to make new coaching hires.

If Belichick were to somehow win 11 games at UNC, he would be perceived as the safest, surest bet in all of football -- having established his bona fides at one of the worst historical programs in the NFL and at an extremely mediocre college program. It would cement his legacy as the greatest coach of all time.

It is just that I see very little pathway for us to win 11 games this year. But were that to somehow happen, there would be a lot of colleges (and even some NFL teams) beating a path to his door. It would firmly establish that he still has it.

 

[SnoopRob]

UNC is the perfect type of program to take a risk on Belichick at this stage of his coaching career. If it works out then great, ideally he’s fixed some of the “infrastructure” problems that have plagued the program for decades, wins some games in the process, and generally sets us on the right path. If it turns out that he’s truly washed up and the whole thing flops, who cares? The stakes here are (relative speaking) pretty low anyways. Not like we haven’t been in that spot many times before for various reasons. At least we tried something different.

In comparison, big time SEC and Big 10 programs don’t need to take that risk. They already have a culture and infrastructure that’s ready to embrace big time football and have better options when they have to make new coaching hires.

This is why I'm ok with the Belichick experiment. If he doesn't do well, the worst that likely happens is that we suffer a few mediocre years and we're looking for a new coach in 3 years or so. That's not a great deal of risk and we've gotten buy in on the football program from the fan base just in getting the hire done.

I'd love for it to be a success, but even if it's not I don't think we've really wasted very much.

 

[Calheel]

My “years of Carolina football fandom have broken my spirit” pessimism says we win 6 or 7 this year

And you thought we would 8 games with Conner Harrell/Max Johnson at QB last year?

Not sure how you can be more pessimistic going into this year than last year. We have a 1000x better coaching and QB situation. And the schedule may even be easier.

 

[CFordUNC]

And you thought we would 8 games with Conner Harrell/Max Johnson at QB last year?

Not sure how you can be more pessimistic going into this year than last year. We have a 1000x better coaching and QB situation. And the schedule may even be easier.

Agree with the better coaching x1000 (duh). Definitely can’t agree yet that we have a better QB situation until we see Lopez play. We almost certainly have a worse roster. I agree our schedule is easier.

I’m only *so* pessimistic- I did project us to go 8-4 (5-3) earlier this week on this thread. I’m just saying that there’s just as many reasons to be skeptical (IMO) as there are to be hopeful. For the second time in a row we hired an out-of-work geriatric coach who petered out at the end of his most recent head coaching gig. Maybe (hopefully) it works much better this time around, but I definitely feel like my skepticism is warranted considering how poorly the first time just went. And again, I think Bubba Cunningham is in agreement with me considering he did not want to hire Belichick for presumably tese exact reasons.

All of that said, I fully agree with the folks above that UNC had little to lose and tons to gain by making this hire. I'm cheering just as hard as everyone else for it to work spectacularly. I'm just long past my days of blind optimistic homerism when it comes to UNC football.

 

[CFordUNC]

Agree with the better coaching x1000 (duh). Definitely can’t agree yet that we have a better QB situation until we see Lopez play. We almost certainly have a worse roster. I agree our schedule is easier.

I’m only *so* pessimistic- I did project us to go 8-4 (5-3) earlier this week on this thread. I’m just saying that there’s just as many reasons to be skeptical (IMO) as there are to be hopeful. For the second time in a row we hired an out-of-work geriatric coach who petered out at the end of his most recent head coaching gig. Maybe (hopefully) it works much better this time around, but I definitely feel like my skepticism is warranted considering how poorly the first time just went. And again, I think Bubba Cunningham is in agreement with me considering he did not want to hire Belichick for presumably tese exact reasons.

All of that said, I fully agree with the folks above that UNC had little to lose and tons to gain by making this hire. I'm cheering just as hard as everyone else for it to work spectacularly. I'm just long past my days of blind optimistic homerism when it comes to UNC football.

Also just want to add, in fairness, that I said all of these exact same things on IC- quite literally the exact same things- about Mack Brown when we hired him in November 2018. I felt the exact same way then as I do now: that we’ve hired a has-been who has long lost his fastball in order to win the press conference who would stock his staff with his buddies for a fun little (well-paying) retirement gig.

I hope it’s different this time, and ultimately once toe meets leather in 3 weeks I’ll be just as excited and supportive as I was when we kicked off against South Carolina in Sept 2019. But I reserve the right to be skeptical since this literal exact same scenario failed only one geriatric head coach ago.

 

[Zoo_View]

Agree with the better coaching x1000 (duh). Definitely can’t agree yet that we have a better QB situation until we see Lopez play. We almost certainly have a worse roster. I agree our schedule is easier.

I’m only *so* pessimistic- I did project us to go 8-4 (5-3) earlier this week on this thread. I’m just saying that there’s just as many reasons to be skeptical (IMO) as there are to be hopeful. For the second time in a row we hired an out-of-work geriatric coach who petered out at the end of his most recent head coaching gig. Maybe (hopefully) it works much better this time around, but I definitely feel like my skepticism is warranted considering how poorly the first time just went. And again, I think Bubba Cunningham is in agreement with me considering he did not want to hire Belichick for presumably tese exact reasons.

All of that said, I fully agree with the folks above that UNC had little to lose and tons to gain by making this hire. I'm cheering just as hard as everyone else for it to work spectacularly. I'm just long past my days of blind optimistic homerism when it comes to UNC football.

I thought you were way too optimistic with 8-4 (5-3).

 

[SnoopRob]

Also just want to add, in fairness, that I said all of these exact same things on IC- quite literally the exact same things- about Mack Brown when we hired him in November 2018. I felt the exact same way then as I do now: that we’ve hired a has-been who has long lost his fastball in order to win the press conference who would stock his staff with his buddies for a fun little (well-paying) retirement gig.

If Mack would have stepped down after the 2022 season, he'd have had a good run while restoring the program to at least a decent level and he'd have been deemed a good hire.

I do think we have to understand that Belichick is very unlikely to be anything more than a 3-5 year coach (and 5 is probably pushing it). If he can build a solid foundation while having some success and leave a much better situation for the next coach in 3-4-5 years, then I think he'd have to be viewed as a good hire.

 

[Calheel]

If Mack would have stepped down after the 2022 season, he'd have had a good run while restoring the program to at least a decent level and he'd have been deemed a good hire.

I do think we have to understand that Belichick is very unlikely to be anything more than a 3-5 year coach (and 5 is probably pushing it). If he can build a solid foundation while having some success and leave a much better situation for the next coach in 3-4-5 years, then I think he'd have to be viewed as a good hire.

It is very hard to leave UNC with the rep as being a "good" hire. Which of the following coaches left as a good hire:
Brown 2.0
Fedora
Withers
Davis
Bunting
Torbush

 

[Zoo_View]

NasCarl was a bad hire.

Bunting was a stupid AND bad hire.

Bunting began the era of hiring coaches who had NO STAFF. Butch Davis continued that - and, his staff was subpar.

We thought that maybe we’d changed that with Fedora. Wrong.

Then, we hired an ancient Mack Brown. He brought NO STAFF with him.

Now, we have Bill Bellichik……comparing Bill Bellichik to Mack Brown is akin to comparing John Wooden or Phil Jackson to Jim Valvano.

 

[CFordUNC]

If Mack would have stepped down after the 2022 season, he'd have had a good run while restoring the program to at least a decent level and he'd have been deemed a good hire.

I do think we have to understand that Belichick is very unlikely to be anything more than a 3-5 year coach (and 5 is probably pushing it). If he can build a solid foundation while having some success and leave a much better situation for the next coach in 3-4-5 years, then I think he'd have to be viewed as a good hire.

I agree, although I think it should’ve been after the 2023 season because I think if he had stepped down after 2022 we don’t have Drake Maye for 2023. And the 2023 season started off really well- we were 6-0 with what should have been a great shot of being 10-0 heading to Clemson.

But yes I do agree fully that if Mack had stepped down a year or two sooner than he was finally forced to do so, it would have been looked upon as a much more favorable hire.