Bill Belichick getting off the hot seat at UNC now qualifies as a bold take

Bill Belichick’s first season as head coach of North Carolina did not go well . The Tar Heels went 4-8 overall and just 2-6 in ACC play. Then there was the sideshow of everything else going on in Chapel Hill, which has been appropriately covered to this point so there’s no need to pile on.

Belichick, one of the greatest football coaches to ever patrol the sidelines, is in an odd space. Even those who didn’t have high hopes for his transition to the college game have reason to be surprised that the first results were so underwhelming.

North Carolina has signed up for another year with Belichick at the helm, which they should, harboring hopes that winning will follow. It’s tough to imagine things going much worse than they did in 2025, yet it’s still strange to have the bar for Belichick set so low.

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Consider Tim Hasselbeck’s appearance on Get Up on Thursday morning where he offered a prediction identified as “bold.”

“I think there will be progress in Chapel Hill that will keep Belichick around … for the forseeable future,” the analyst said.

Hasselbeck doesn’t think anyone else is predicting this right now, which may be true. But then again, if everyone thinks the Tar Heels should explore a non-Belchick option right now, then perhaps they have a point.

The real question to ask is that if modest progress would even be a good thing for the program. If it doesn’t raise the ceiling and makes it that much harder to move on from Belichick, then that could be a bigger problem.

Either way, it’s striking to see just how far the conversation around an all-time great has fallen. On the bright side, it presents another opportunity for him to turn an underdog into a juggernaut, if there’s time and appetite for such a project in Chapel Hill.