Chapel Hell: North Carolina Throttled in Bill Belichick's Opener

The Bill Belichick era in Chapel Hill couldn't have gotten off to a better start. North Carolina got the football to open the 2025 season and went 83 yards in seven plays for a touchdown. The Tar Heels were going to be the darlings of college football for the next three months.

Then TCU spent the next 56 minutes opening a can of whoop ass. I was going to wait until the game was officially over to include the final score in the headline, but it has been over in earnest for so long that I can't believe there are still seven minutes left and there's just no point. This thing was never close.

From the time TCU touched the ball, it was complete and total domination. You can never take away the Heels' 7-0 lead, though.

Even though the Horned Frogs were just a 3.5-point favorite, it would have been pretty stunning for North Carolina to have played exceedingly well in this game. It's an almost entirely new roster. I don't know how much positivity there is to be taken from this game if you're a Tar Heels fan, but this is a team that's going to take a little while to gel.

UNC has a couple teams it should handle before going to Orlando to take on UCF and then getting Clemson in Chapel Hill. I'm certainly not picking the Heels to beat Clemson, but let's see what this team looks like after those games. If it's still getting run out of the building in a month, then maybe we can really hit the panic button.

This certainly wasn't what people packed Kenan Memorial Stadium to see, though. Hopefully Belichick gets the boys right and has the celebs still showing up in November.