Belichick Lost Focus. Tar Heels Paid the Price.

The night couldn’t have gone much worse for Bill Belichick and the Tar Heels. They stormed right down the field for an opening drive touchdown. It was all downhill from there. The Tar Heels lost the game 48-14.

Let’s hold the excuses for Belichick. I know it was his first game in college. He’s also 29-38 in the NFL since parting with Tom Brady (2020). He spent a part of this offseason on an infamously embarrassing press tour for his “tell-all” book where he avoids topics he doesn’t want to address (Robert Kraft and Malcom Butler). Belichick spent last season working for every ESPN program that would have him. Bottom line – Bill Belichick, the man whose name is synonymous with football, has been distracted. He went from spending over 20 years trolling the media, to joining the media. He went from Winning Super Bowls to losing College Football games. He went from an age-appropriate relationship with Linda Holiday (62), to a cringe worthy relationship with his “muse” Jordon Hudson (24).

If Belichick ever wants to get back to the NFL, as we all suspect he does being just 26 wins behind Don Shula’s all time Head Coaching Record, he’s going to need to avoid performances like the one the Tar Heels had tonight. What owner hires a coach who is 76-87 without Tom Brady? A coach whose owner reportedly didn’t vouch for him when the Falcons were considering hiring him? What reason would an owner have to believe that Belichick can still lead an NFL locker room to success, when he can’t run a successful College Program?

Personally, I’d love to see Belichick make a return to the NFL and have success leading a program. There’s something unsettling about watching the coach that beat all of our favorite teams for so long, go out so sad. Having said that, Belichick hasn’t given me a reason to believe in his coaching since 2018, when the Patriots scraped out an ugly Super Bowl win over the Rams.