The NFL's 33rd Team played a lot more like the ACC's 15th team last season, because that's exactly what they were.
Bill Belichick's first North Carolina squad went 4-8 on the year, starting with a 48-14 nationally-televised loss to TCU that felt less competitive than many Power 4 vs. FCS games. Things got better from there, but only slightly. It took four tries for North Carolina to play a Power 4 team within 25 points, and six tries to beat one. Five of UNC's eight losses were by 16 points or more.
North Carolina was 120th nationally on offense, but an admirable 25th in yards per play defense.
Speaking to ESPN's Pete Thamel at ACC media days on Friday, Belichick said his 2026 team is "way ahead" of last year's outfit, calling the difference "night and day."
"Overall as a football team, our culture, our program, our ability to operate as a team is much higher than it was a year ago," he told ESPN, "and our talent level is higher."
At the podium in the main room, Belichick was much more, ahem, Belichick-ian.
"We're just going to keep grinding away every day," he said. That's what we try to do -- string good days together, keep stacking them up, and see where that takes us. The expectations are to have a good day today, rest, recover, refuel, rehydrate, and put another one together tomorrow. We'll see where that takes us."
So, not exactly a proclamation that North Carolina will return to a bowl game this winter.
North Carolina's 2025 roster was built on the fly, and it showed. Seventy new players, almost all of them transfers. The 2025 Tar Heels looked and played a lot like Coach Prime's 2023 Colorado Buffaloes, another team built by a celebrity coach with no FBS roster building experience. There is no Travis Hunter on the 2026 North Carolina roster, but there are 40 freshmen, a deliberately large class that included 10 4-stars and ranked 17th in the Rivals industry rankings.
North Carolina's schedule this fall is one of the toughest in the country on a pound-for-pound basis. Ten of their 12 opponents posted winning records last season. The non-conference slate includes TCU, Notre Dame and UConn (a 9-game winner a year ago), and the ACC schedule is the toughest in the conference. The Tar Heels get defending champion Duke, runner-up Virginia, actual-best-team and national runner-up Miami, 9-game winner Louisville, 8-game winner Pitt, 8-game winner NC State, and Clemson. As it stands today, North Carolina will likely be favored only against East Tennessee State and Syracuse.
And so it's no surprise why Belichick struck an optimistic tone with tempered expectations: the 2026 Heels could beat the 2025 team by 14 points and still go 4-8.
A competitive outing in another national window against TCU to open the college football season would be a great start. And then the Tar Heels will rest, recover, refuel and rehydrate, and try to stack another good day after that one.