UNC Football Catch-all | Bill Belichick Era underway

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Ramrouser said:
This season will see improvement. Stop the negativity. Don’t hate a coach just because of his politics.
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Nobody here hates Belichick because of his politics. The fact that that even crosses your mind is proof of how politics-poisoned your brain is. Everyone here hates Belichick because he sucks at his job and is embarrassing our university’s football program both on and off the field. He could wear a MAGA hat on the sideline for all I care, with ‘Trump 2028’ tattooed on his forehead, if he actually won football games for us.
 
BB and staff were paid almost $20 million dollars. They had a whopping total of 4 wins with zero of those vs teams in the top 100. That's why I hate him. He's nothing more than a goddamn conman just like our Prez.

Huge embarrassment that we hired such an old has been with zero college experience that no one else wanted.
 
CFordUNC said:
Nobody here hates Belichick because of his politics. The fact that that even crosses your mind is proof of how politics-poisoned your brain is. Everyone here hates Belichick because he sucks at his job and is embarrassing our university’s football program both on and off the field. He could wear a MAGA hat on the sideline for all I care, with ‘Trump 2028’ tattooed on his forehead, if he actually won football games for us.
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If it helps, I also hate him for his time with the Patriots, too.
 
Ramrouser said:
This season will see improvement. Stop the negativity. Don’t hate a coach just because of his politics.
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Right. I hate him for his politics.

Going 4-8 (2-6 in the vaunted ACC) with wins over Charlotte (1-11), Richmond (7-5/3-4 in the Patriot League), Syracuse (3-9/1-7), and Stanford (4-8/3-5) while hiring his sons as overpaid assistant coaches and his BFF as his highly overpaid GM and his BFF’s incompetent son as QB coach and having that 33rd NFL team talk around the program.

None of that has to do with hating Belichick.🙄

Nor does living in New England during most of his tenure with the Patriots and hating the Patriots.🙄
 
I don't know if I've ever had less hope going into a football season - and I'm worried that the people who hired BB won't want to admit they were wrong and we will keep him several more seasons
 
No question UNC was terrible last season due, in part, to Belichick's arrogance in thinking he was heads and shoulders above mere college coaches. Thought he could just roll out Kitchens as an OC and run a 2010 NFL vanilla pro offense. Based upon his actions, I think he's been humbled and/or embarrassed and you'll see a tremendous improvement this season. Petrino is going to run a competent offense. We have 4 QBs on our roster heads and shoulders better than Lopez. The TEs are NFL like. The running back from LSU is going to plow over people with the OL admittedly a work in progress.

The defense will improve simply because the offense will be vastly superior to last season.
 
GoHeelsweeeehoooo said:
I don't know if I've ever had less hope going into a football season - and I'm worried that the people who hired BB won't want to admit they were wrong and we will keep him several more seasons
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FWIW, while I personally have always thought Belichick was a terrible idea, I do think there's a chance we will be significantly better this season due to hiring a real OC (Petrino) and Belichick and Lombardi pulling their heads ever so slightly out of their asses when it comes to figuring out the college football ecosystem a little better. But we were so bad last season, and our schedule was so easy, that we could be "significantly better" and still be completely irrelevant with a record similar to last year.
 
Ramrouser said:
We have 4 QBs on our roster heads and shoulders better than Lopez.
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I do think the QBs on our roster have some potential, and with Petrino we should see better offense regardless, but this is laughably optimistic. Most of those guys you say are "head and shoulders better than Lopez" have barely, if ever, thrown a pass in a college game.
 
Here's the schedule for the fall:

TCU (in Ireland)
East Tennessee State (home)
Clemson (away)
Notre Dame (home)
Pitt (away)
dook (away)
Syracuse (home)
Miami (home)
UConn (away)
Louisville (home)
Uva (away)
State (home)

So how many wins do we see? I'm seeing like 5 at most. Maybe we pull off an upset and get to 6? But that's a stretch.

Clemson, ND, Uva, TCU, and Miami all look like sure losses. Pitt on the road? Don't feel good about that. Don't feel good about the Louisville game either. This should absolutely be the year we beat State, yet they seem to have our number.
 
Petrino is an upgrade.
Gio was a terrible QB.
OL looks like its a lot worse.

Defense took some hits...not sure how to gauge replacements.

My faith in BB is low. Michael Lombardi is a paper tiger.
 
I, too, thought Gio Lopez was a bad QB until I read this article this week with the following anecdote:

*At South Alabama, Gio was lauded as an improvisational playmaker -- a supposed perk for a Carolina offense still under construction. On the day Gio was officially named the starter, receiver Jordan Shipp said the team had given Gio a nickname befitting his playmaking style: Magic Johnson.

But once the games began, the story was entirely different. The Tar Heels wanted to play a pro-style offense, and Gio was told he couldn't audible at the line of scrimmage and was instructed to avoid scrambling from the pocket when a play broke down.

"You were ridiculed if you didn't do it exactly the way he was told," Barney (Lopez's father) said. "You could be at the dang line, see the play is about to be blown up, but if you try to call it off or audible, you were ridiculed."*

Gio might not necessarily be a P4 starting QB but it's pretty apparent that our coaching staff was trying to force a square peg into a round hole throughout the entire season with him.
 
UNC’s 2026 QB’s:
  • Billy Edwards (Wake ‘21, ZERO games; Maryland ‘22, 7 games, 46 attempts; ‘23, 8 games, 30 attempts; ‘24, 11 games, 4 wins, 273/420, 15 TD, 9 INT; ‘25, 2 games, injured knee)
  • Taron Dickens (‘23-‘25, Western Carolina, 2025 Southern Conference POY, 271/365, 38 TD, 2 INT); he’s listed at 5’11”
  • Travis Burgess (true FR; enrolled for Spring; 4 star from Georgia; led team to 6A title as JR; out for season as a SR with a knee injury in the 2nd game)
  • Miles O’Neill (transfer from TAMU; 7 attempts and 9 rushes for the Aggies over 2 seasons)
  • Au’Tori Newkirk (SO from Fayetteville; 2 games, 6 attempts)
The LSU Running Back:
  • Kaleb Jackson (‘23 - 13 games, 31 rushes; ‘24 - 13 games, 44 rushes; ‘25 - 4 games, 7 rushes); he has some speed - 4th in the 100 meters at the Louisiana 4A State Meet as a JR with a 10.66 (at least 6 sub-11.0 100’s in HS track career)
I hope all of these guys play well and exceed expectations.

I hope they have an O-Line.
 
The only very clear upgrade that occurred over this past offseason was at the offensive coordinator position. Bobby Petrino is a scoundrel as a person but he's a phenomenal college football playcaller and schemer, so his presence along will make UNC look at a bare minimum competent offensively.

I'll assume that we upgraded at QB but that's mainly because we'll now have an OC who actually knows what to do with quarterbacks. As I said in a post above, I'm way less convinced now that Gio Lopez was a terrible QB as much as I'm convinced that he was put in a terrible situation for a QB to be in.

The OL looks rough.

The DL lost its best pieces to the portal.

The vast majority of our portal acquisitions were a bunch of mid-major players OR a bunch of backup P4 players with precious little or no actual significant game experience. We did not get better "enough" in the portal this offseason, IMO.

The schedule is a lot tougher.

We're likely looking at another 4-8 type season, with 5-7 or 6-6 seemingly being optimistic. I would be thrilled to be proven wrong but I can't find more than 6 wins on that schedule and even 6 seems generous.
 
CFordUNC said:
I, too, thought Gio Lopez was a bad QB until I read this article this week with the following anecdote:

*At South Alabama, Gio was lauded as an improvisational playmaker -- a supposed perk for a Carolina offense still under construction. On the day Gio was officially named the starter, receiver Jordan Shipp said the team had given Gio a nickname befitting his playmaking style: Magic Johnson.

But once the games began, the story was entirely different. The Tar Heels wanted to play a pro-style offense, and Gio was told he couldn't audible at the line of scrimmage and was instructed to avoid scrambling from the pocket when a play broke down.

"You were ridiculed if you didn't do it exactly the way he was told," Barney (Lopez's father) said. "You could be at the dang line, see the play is about to be blown up, but if you try to call it off or audible, you were ridiculed."*

Gio might not necessarily be a P4 starting QB but it's pretty apparent that our coaching staff was trying to force a square peg into a round hole throughout the entire season with him.
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Did the article explain why it took Gio a half second longer to throw the ball to a receiver than an average QB?
 
Calheel said:
Did the article explain why it took Gio a half second longer to throw the ball to a receiver than an average QB?
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It probably had a lot to do with the fact that he was being asked to do things that he wasn't comfortable with or capable of, which is exactly what the article talks about. A quarterback being slower on a throw is either 100% a talent/arm issue (did not seem to be the case for Gio, IMO) or 100% a processing/decision-making issue. If it's a processing/decision-making issue, then it's on the coaches to find out how they can scheme or call plays or put the QB in situations where he isn't paralyzed.

I hope Gio lights it up at Wake Forest next year for multiple reasons. One, he seems like a gamer and a good kid. And two, I want further proof and evidence that Bill Belichick is a shitty college coach and that a guy like Jake Dickert can eat his lunch.
 
I get that they play calling and scheme were suspect, but Gio looked overmatch. Thought he was a little better by the end of the season but only because the floor was so low.

Last time our qb situation was so poor were those two last Fedora years.
 
CFordUNC said:
Let’s just hope we’re only stuck with this for another eight months or so.
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I choose to hope that we look disciplined, well-coached and well-developed this yr, and put a team performance we can be proud of on the field. Off the field - i don't care care unless there is some ethical or moral problem unless it is sapping funding. Short skirts and foia requests don't fall into either bucket.
 
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