The first season with Bill Belichick at the helm for North Carolina certainly didn't go as planned. North Carolina, which was expecting to be a much better team than it has been in the past, just wasn't able to do anything correctly on either side of the football.
It was very important that North Carolina played better under Belichick, as there was continued hope that things would be very different. With all the backlash the program took for deciding to bring him in, it wasn't crazy to say we needed to see some drastic changes.
Unfortunately, that hasn't been the case early on, and it's led many to question whether Belichick can even be the guy at North Carolina.
So much so that one writer even went as far as to say that North Carolina's head coach is the 16th-best head coach out of 17 in the entire ACC.
“As noted above, if this were a list of NFL coaches Belichick would be No. 1. But he went 4-8 in his only college season despite having more advantages than other similarly situated coaches. (For example, Wake Forest’s Dickert was hired later and had a lower roster budget but outperformed Belichick throughout the season and when they played.) Belichick and general manager Michael Lombardi need to demonstrate that they know what they’re looking for when they recruit. North Carolina is not being cheap relative to the rest of the league. Belichick obviously knows how to develop players and coach them on gameday. Evaluation was the biggest issue. And if the roster isn’t better than last season, the results probably won’t get much better,” On3 wrote.
I don't want to say that Belichick was the second-worst coach in the ACC last year, or will be moving forward, as it really was only one year.
However, when a program like North Carolina brings in a guy like Belichick to be the answer, it's going to be criticized unless everything works out. That's the state of college football, and rightfully so.
With how much North Carolina is spending on its football program, it's not crazy to say that Belichick has been a major disappointment so far and has been one of the worst coaches in the ACC.
