A week from tonight, all of the talk will finally be backed with some results as the 2025 Tar Heels led by Bill Belichick take the field in front of a national audience against TCU.
This week, we’ll be starting to look at the actual game—but in case you missed them, here’s all of our previews for the 2025 UNC Football team.
Quarterbacks by Brandon Anderson
Wide Receivers by Jonathan Shuping
Tight Ends by Brandon Anderson
Offensive Line by Akil Guruparan
Defensive Line by Jonathan
Shuping
Every season is going to bring about its own questions, but it’s also easy to say that it has been a long time since a UNC Football team has come in with this much intrigue. No one expects the Tar Heels to contend for a national title or even end up in the College Football Playoff. Yet, because of one man, the Tar Heels have entered the national conversation enough to where ESPN chose the Tar Heels to be their Labor Day Game, and to hammer it home will have a College Gameday-like pregame show before it.
That man is Bill Belichick. He was in charge of arguably the best modern-day NFL dynasty — though the Chiefs are currently fighting for that crown — and while people still argue who deserves more credit for the six Super Bowl titles for the New England Patriots, multiple parties are looking to cash in on the fact that a coach of that stature is now coaching at one of the biggest names in college sports. UNC is hoping Belichick can at the very least wake up a consistently sleeping football giant and bring ratings — and thus money — along with him. ESPN is hoping to turn him into their own Deion Sanders, where fans can’t help but to watch no matter how good the team is. Fans are hoping that the big bet that UNC made on football with his salary and the massive roster overhaul is the start of Carolina taking the next step to perhaps finally hitting football relevance.
It’s a lot to ask. As all of our previews have shown, there are going to be more new players than old — and at least in this day of the Transfer Portal it’s easier for a coach to come in and restock a team with “his” players instead of having to make do with ones who were recruited by another staff. All of the changes point to a team that’s likely going to have a more muted offense that tries to control the ball. It’ll have a defense that might actually be able to do the job, with a coordinator who’s had success at another P4 school. They’ll have a special teams unit that is an actual focus. Overall it’ll be a team coached by someone who is a lot more hands-on than the CEO style of the previous regime.
So the on-field product arguably is going to be better coached and less likely to make some of the mistakes of the previous few seasons, but will all the new faces on the field and the sidelines mesh into a team that justifies the investment? The schedule right now looks to be one of the easiest the Tar Heels have had in a while. Their only P4 non-conference game is a team that is also coming off a rough season, and their ACC schedule only has one team expected to be fighting for a conference championship — and that game will be in Chapel Hill. They play both of the California schools, and one of them just lost to Hawaii in their opener as they move to a similar model with a GM and an ex-NFL coach.
We’ll know a little bit more about what to expect once the clock hits 0:00 a week from tonight. A win against TCU and it’s hard not to at least think this squad may generate some noise. A loss and a lot of the intrigue will be knocked out — though an ACC Championship Game appearance isn’t out of the question since it’s based on overall record. Ultimately, no matter the result, the question is going to be whether the team looks like it’s being coached by a competent staff, and whether they can build the momentum that fans and administrators alike are hoping for.
