As Bill Belichick was winning six Super Bowls in 24 seasons with the New England Patriots, the coach’s teams came to establish certain baseline expectations.
They almost always throttled their divisional opponents and projected an air of exacting competency, all while imploring players to focus on football under a credo he repeated ad nauseam: “Do your job.”
For the first time since he was pushed out of New England in 2024, Belichick will coach a game, when the University of North Carolina faces Texas Christian University on Monday. Seeing Belichick on a sideline again feels familiar. What wasn’t was the disarray that surrounded him, particularly throughout the nine months since he took the job in Chapel Hill.
It’s why, on the heels of a tabloid-filled offseason for a coach considered the greatest of all time — when there was more news about his relationship with his 24-year-old girlfriend, Jordon Hudson, than about his coaching — it’s anyone’s guess what will happen in his first college season.
“He’s going to teach you the right fundamentals, the right techniques. He’s going to have a high expectation for you and you’re going to develop a lot. That’s what I know,” former Patriots quarterback Tom Brady said on Fox. “I think the challenge for him is he’s dealing with probably a lot of underdeveloped players because he’s dealt with guys that are four, five, six years further along than what he’s normally had to deal with. I think there’s probably a learning curve for him.”
The marriage between this coach and this school was one few saw coming. Including his time as an NFL coordinator, Belichick owns eight Super Bowl rings; North Carolina, meanwhile, boasts just eight double-digit-win seasons in its 121-season history. At UNC, basketball is one of the school’s traditional powers; its football program, however, is not. In a bid to become one, North Carolina swapped out the oldest active coach in the NCAA’s Football Bowl Subdivision, 73-year-old Mack Brown, for a 73-year-old successor who would hold the same distinction.
The idea that Belichick, who had coached in the NFL for his entire career, since he was 23, would leave for the college ranks was so unexpected that former Patriots stars Brady, tight end Rob Gronkowski and receiver Julian Edelman laughed off the possibility last December.
“Getting out there on the recruiting trail and dealing with all these college kids, that would be frightening,” Brady said on Fox.
“Could you imagine Bill on a couch recruiting an 18-year-old?” Edelman said.
That was Dec. 8. Three days later, Belichick was sitting in a packed press conference in Chapel Hill, being introduced as the next UNC coach. He wasn’t universally thought to be the man for the job; according to ESPN, his candidacy divided the school’s leadership.
When Belichick promised to operate North Carolina like the NFL’s “33rd team,” it promoted his big-league bona fides. Yet it was also a reminder that none of the league’s 32 teams had opted to hire him during the two hiring cycles since he had left New England, despite being only 15 wins shy of passing Don Shula for most all time.
His best shot came in 2024 when he interviewed with Atlanta Falcons owner Arthur Blank; however, a conversation Blank had with Patriots owner Robert Kraft, whose relationship with Belichick had deteriorated, may have undermined Belichick’s chances, according to ESPN.
Belichick spent last season out of football not by holing up in retirement at his beachfront home in Nantucket, but by doing something that seemed to be the least favorite part of his 49 years in the NFL — going on a media blitz. Dour and evasive behind a lectern in New England, Belichick poked fun at himself and former players at a 2024 roast of Brady, appeared regularly last fall on two ESPN broadcasts, analyzed plays on a CW show, and hosted or co-hosted multiple podcasts.
He also wrote a memoir, “The Art of Winning,” whose publicity campaign last spring raised questions around his relationship with Hudson and whether it would affect his ability to do his new job.
Asked during a taping of a CBS morning show about their relationship, Belichick, wearing a ragged sweatshirt that became his calling card in New England, said he had “never been too worried about what everyone else thinks.” But when Belichick was asked how the two had met, Hudson, sitting off camera, cut in.
“We’re not talking about this,” she said.
Belichick later released a statement defending Hudson for “simply doing her job to ensure the interview stayed on track” and claimed the two had met on a flight to Palm Beach in 2021.
Belichick would later say that Hudson, who is not employed by the university, “doesn’t have anything to do with UNC football.” Weeks into taking over in Chapel Hill, however, Belichick reportedly asked that Hudson be copied on certain emails. And according to emails released under public records requests, Hudson had suggested to university officials how to shape public relations around the hiring of Belichick’s son Steve as the school’s defensive coordinator.
In May, Belichick supported Hudson’s bid to become Miss Maine USA by sitting in the pageant’s front row. (Hudson finished third.)
As tabloid attention grew around Belichick’s personal life, former Patriots players recalled with irony how the coach constantly stressed the importance of minimizing public distractions.
“When you were on the Patriots, the whole goal was to eliminate all the distractions that can possibly happen while you’re on the team,” Gronkowski said in May. “And don’t bring those distractions to the team and in the locker room. And we’re just looking down at the program in North Carolina and it just feels like there are just distractions 24/7 down there. There’s just no football talk at all.”
Edelman, the former star receiver, also described questions about Hudson’s role with the team and the coach as “a distraction.”
“That’s what we all think right now. It’s becoming a distraction. We gotta practice what we preach here,” Edelman said in May.
Belichick and Hudson’s relationship isn’t only personal, but professional. This month, a company applied for more than a dozen Belichick-related trademarks through the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office — including “Gold Digger,” “Chapel Bill (Bill’s Version), “The Belichick Way” and “Dynasty (Bill’s Version).” That company lists Hudson as the manager.
When Belichick wasn’t facing questions about Hudson, he was being asked about how his NFL acumen would translate to college.
“There’s no owner, there’s no owner’s son, there’s no cap, everything that goes with the marketing and everything else, which I’m all for that. But it’s way less of what it was at that level,” Belichick told The Boston Globe. “Generic NFL teams, you have the owner, president, general manager, personnel director, college director, pro director, cap guy, some other consultant, then head coach. I’d say when we had our best years in New England, we had fewer people and more of a direct vision. And as that expanded, it became harder to be successful.”
Building a roster has been the biggest change, he told the Globe; instead of tracking more than 300 NFL free agents, UNC hosted more than 4,000 prospects during the offseason.
Still, for all of the scrutiny UNC faced during the spring, it could financially win the fall even without a notable bump from last season’s 6-7 record. Revenue generated by the football team is projected to increase from $12 million last season to $19 million, a UNC official told the Globe. In the school bookstore, sleeveless Tar Heels hoodies are being sold for $84.99.
During Belichick’s tenure in New England, the Patriots never allowed “Hard Knocks,” HBO’s all-access NFL docuseries, to film the team. Yet a Hulu docuseries will follow the Tar Heels in 2025.
For better or worse, attention is on Belichick and North Carolina — and how well he will, ultimately, do his job.
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