Bill Belichick had apparently been waiting for the right moment to return to coaching in the NFL. However, instead of coming back to the NFL, the six-time Super Bowl-winning coach is moving to college football to take the head coaching job at North Carolina.
The school made the announcement on Wednesday night that it had reached a five-year agreement with Belichick, about a week after his name was mentioned as a potential replacement for the program’s winningest coach, Mack Brown.
The deal still needs approval from UNC trustees and the UNC public system’s governors, and no introductory press conference has been scheduled yet.
UNC is replacing the 73-year-old Brown with the 72-year-old Belichick, a coach who has never worked at the college level but enjoyed great success in the NFL, mostly with quarterback Tom Brady during his 24-year run with the Patriots, which ended last season.
Belichick also has a small family connection to the UNC program. His late father, Steve, was an assistant coach for the Tar Heels from 1953-1955.
Bill Belichick
Bill Belichick (NFL)
“I am excited for the opportunity at UNC-Chapel Hill,” Belichick said in a statement. “I grew up around college football with my dad and treasured those times. I have always wanted to coach in college and now I look forward to building the football program in Chapel Hill.”
Belichick is joining the college scene during a time of rapid changes in college athletics, including player movement through the transfer portal, athletes’ ability to profit from endorsements, and the upcoming arrival of revenue sharing.
The hiring of Belichick can be seen as an innovative step by the school to approach these challenges with someone known for his success at the highest level of football.
“We know that college athletics is changing, and those changes require new and innovative thinking,” said UNC athletics director Bubba Cunningham. “Bill Belichick is a football legend, and hiring him to lead our program represents a new approach that will ensure Carolina football can evolve, compete and win — today and in the future.”
Belichick has 333 career regular-season and postseason wins in the NFL, ranking second in NFL history, behind only Don Shula’s 347 wins. He also holds the NFL record for playoff wins with 31.
He is only the second coach to win a Super Bowl and later become a college head coach; Bill Walsh won three Super Bowls with the San Francisco 49ers before going 17-17-1 as Stanford’s head coach from 1992-94.
San Francisco 49ers offensive tackle Trent Williams and teammates take the field for an NFL football game
Since leaving the Patriots, Belichick had been connected to other NFL coaching jobs, including the Atlanta Falcons in January. That’s why news of his talks with UNC — first reported by Inside Carolina and later confirmed by the AP — was a surprise, as he was seen as an unexpected and unconventional choice for the position.
The two sides had been discussing the terms for several days before reaching an agreement on what seemed like an unlikely outcome.
Belichick mentioned on ESPN’s “The Pat McAfee Show” that he had “a couple of good conversations” with UNC chancellor Lee Roberts and spent much of the past year looking more closely at college football.
“If I was in a college program, the college program would be a pipeline to the NFL for the players that had the ability to play in the NFL,” Belichick said. “It would be a professional program: training, nutrition, scheme, coaching, techniques that would transfer to the NFL. It would be an NFL program at a college level.
And an education that would get the players ready for their career after football, whether that was the end of their college career or at the end of their pro career.”
Belichick’s NFL coaching career began in 1975 as an assistant with the Baltimore Colts. He later worked as the defensive coordinator under Bill Parcells with the New York Giants, winning two Super Bowls with the team. He also spent five seasons as the Cleveland Browns’ head coach in the 1990s.
In 2000, he got another chance as a head coach with the Patriots. In his second season, with Brady becoming a star, Belichick won his first Super Bowl title as a head coach.
Cleveland Browns players celebrate after his touchdown in the 1st half
The Belichick-Brady partnership went on to win Super Bowls in the 2003, 2004, 2014, 2016, and 2018 seasons, and Belichick was named NFL Coach of the Year three times.
Now, Belichick will take over the UNC program, which faces the challenge of building a successful and lasting football team. The program has reached top levels at different points in history, such as when Brown built the Tar Heels into a top-10 team in the late 1990s, and in 2015 and 2020, when they briefly cracked the top 10 in the AP poll.
The peak of Brown’s second time at UNC came in 2022, with a nine-win season and a trip to the Atlantic Coast Conference championship game, led by Drake Maye, who was later drafted by the Patriots in the first round of the 2024 NFL draft.
On November 26, UNC announced that Brown would not return for a seventh season, with his departure becoming official after his final game, a loss to rival N.C. State on November 30.
Freddie Kitchens, a former Browns head coach, has been serving as the interim coach while the Tar Heels prepare to play UConn in the Fenway Bowl on December 28.