Bill Belichick's UNC faces a bleak 2026 outlook. A CBS Sports prediction forecasts the Tar Heels finishing last in the ACC, potentially jeopardizing his tenure.
It was only fair to give Bill Belichick a mulligan for his first season as head coach of North Carolina.
Belichick was late to the recruiting game, and the roster he coaches in 2025 looked more like a Group of 6 team than a Power 4 program in the ACC. That goes to explain why UNC went 4-8 in 2025.
North Carolina hired Belichick in the hopes that his coaching skills could elevate the program to compete for the ACC.
But Super Bowls are built differently than national championships, and the six-time champion head coach admitted last season had a learning curve.
It's unclear how much better the Tar Heels will be in 2026. The team was aggressive in adding talent in the transfer portal, though it remains to be seen how much of an upgrade the team will have at quarterback.
Cody Nagel of CBS Sports is predicting that things don't improve at all under Belichick in the upcoming season. He thinks UNC will finish with the worst record in the conference.
"Expectations aren't high in Chapel Hill entering Year 2 of the Bill Belichick era," Nagel wrote. "FanDuel sets the win total at just 4.5, with North Carolina carrying the third-worst ACC title odds. The schedule doesn't help.
"Six games come against projected top-half ACC teams, plus a tough non-conference slate that starts with TCU in Dublin, Ireland, and also includes Notre Dame. And that Dublin opener matters. The last four teams to lose the opener there haven't finished above .500 in the same season. Not exactly a trend UNC wants to test."
Finishing at the bottom of the ACC would be a disaster for Belichick. It might force the Tar Heels to look at parting ways with the six-time winning Super Bowl head coach.
Belichick is focused on making sure the team gets better via development.
"We’ll take it one day at a time,” he said during spring practice in March, via Yahoo Sports. "Everything is development. That’s what we do: develop players and develop the team."
The upcoming season will tell a lot about how capable Belichick and his staff are of developing college players into contenders.