Bill Belichick future: Why North Carolina coach's return in 2026 is highly doubted

Just over a month into his first season, it’s already a question of whether Bill Belichick will have a second one at North Carolina. This is coming of little surprise to Josh Pate, though, based on how the thought process of hiring him has gone from the start in Chapel Hill.

Pate, appearing on ‘Get Up’ on Thursday, was asked about the latest reporting from yesterday regarding Belichick’s future at UNC. He thought it was just the next signal that this hire isn’t going to end well, as he thought it was a flawed decision from the start in hiring Belichick.

“Well, I think we can go back in history and see what the vote of confidence normally means,” Pate said. “Sometimes, sometimes it looks like the stars have aligned and a great hire happens and there’s rah rah, and everything is going to be great. I want to stress to the viewers that don’t watch a lot of college football? That was never the case. Most people who observe college football on a ground level looked and said, ‘Do what?’. And, you need to understand how convoluted and how big a mess the hiring process was there to begin with. The very athletic director there that’s having to put out that statement had his head gone above in order to make the hire to begin with, so there are people even in that statement that didn’t really have Bill Belichick as their first choice.

“One of the dumbest things I heard anyone say in this whole process is, ‘Well, Belichick should be okay in college football because college football is just like the NFL now.’ When you said that, if anyone said that? At that point, I just turn the volume down on your opinion, because, at that point, you really displayed you had no clue what the actual landscape of college athletics is like for the head coach at the University of North Carolina.”

There was at least a whole lot of intrigue in the Tar Heels’ hiring of Belichick this offseason. There has been almost none of that since the opener, though, as, over the past month, North Carolina is 2-3 overall, with the three losses coming against each of their power opponents as they’ve been seemingly overmatched with an average margin per loss of 29 points. That, as of this week going into the Tar Heels’ second bye, has brought his tenure into question already, with reporting on Wednesday suggesting this could be the lone collegiate season for Belichick by the end of this.

Pate is of that opinion as well. He thinks those around the ACC might actually prefer that Belichick stay, too, which is a further indictment of his work so far, as he’s the next coach to seemingly not figure out what’s seen as a potential power in the sport in UNC.

“I highly doubt he’s the head coach there in 2026,” Pate said. “I can’t find many people up and down the Atlantic Coast Conference that would privately indicate that they think he’s going to be back. None of them have said anything publicly because, publicly, they love seeing North Carolina in a state of flux because North Carolina has sort of been that evergreen sleeping giant-type program. No one in the ACC wants North Carolina to get its football act together.

“Look, if you hire him, and you pay him $10 million, you’re not just paying him to be more of what North Carolina already has been. Just be real. Let’s call it like it is. You’re paying him to get them to playoff-caliber status, which means you’ve got to out-recruit Miami for some kids, or Clemson for some kids. Because, it’s not just out-recruiting. Like, you’ve got to out-recruit them, and then out-develop and then out-scheme on game day, and you’re not doing all that at North Carolina unless you give yourself an edge. They haven’t given themselves any edge.”

Regardless of what anyone thought of the hire back in December, Belichick is not working out there less than a year later and just five games into this season. That’s a result that Pate expected, with him now expecting another coaching search again come this December for North Carolina.

“This is not going to end well, Pate said. “It was never going to go well. I think it’ll be a clean slate come ’26.”