It’s been exactly nine months since Bill Belichick was named the head coach of the North Carolina Tar Heels.
We got our first real glimpse of Chapel Bill in Carolina Blue six months ago, and it suddenly hit home for many that the six-time Super Bowl winner was a college coach in the flesh. A mere 10 days ago, this grand experiment became officially official as TCU ruthlessly handed one of the game’s greatest coaches his most humbling loss ever.
All this while however, Belichick has been leading a double life.
He’s been North Carolina’s head coach, sure, showing up to media days, donning the headset and even hitting the road to recruit. But the most-discussed coach of 2025 has also let that all take a back seat, in both words and deeds, to the other gig that has occupied his thoughts: former New England Patriots head coach.
It’s a real pigskin version of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde playing out—and this new version of Belichick is simply incapable of becoming the North Carolina coach he’s tasked with being until he lets his Patriots past go.
That was reinforced this week with two very different angles that both point back to the Tar Heels coach still thinking existentially in free time about why he’s preparing to play Richmond on Saturday instead of scheming up to stop the Miami Dolphins on Sunday.
The first is somewhat comical as the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office refused Belichick—and specifically his management company run by girlfriend Jordon Hudson—four different applications surrounding trademarks held by New England, including the coach’s oft-cited phrase, “Do your job.”
Belichick, of course, couldn’t get the rights to that trademark and the three others since it’s still in the Patriots’ legal hands. Instead, he sought out the trademark for the phrase with “(Bill’s Version)” tacked on. In denying the application, the USPTO cited that is because it was “so similar to a registered mark that it is likely consumers would be confused, mistaken, or deceived as to the commercial source of the goods and/or services of the parties.”
After seeing North Carolina look ill-prepared in getting blown out by TCU and fairly meandering against an overmatched Charlotte, perhaps the patent office may be on to something about Bill’s version of coaching a college team.
The other, more direct, confirmation that Belichick still feels like a scorned lover to his former franchise is in his comments Saturday where he confirmed that scouts from the Patriots were not welcome around his new team.
“It’s clear that I’m not welcome there, around their facility,” Belichick said after beating the college version of the 49ers. “And so they’re not welcome at ours. It’s pretty simple.”
If only that were the case.
On top of being incredibly petty, it’s also quite untrue—as the franchise was quick to dispute in subsequent days with comments from current Patriots head coach Mike Vrabel. On top of that, outside of the Pitt Panthers walking down the hall to the Steelers’ facility, it’s fairly rare for any college staffers to simply show up to an NFL building without an invite. It’s not like Belichick is pounding on the door to be let in when he visits Foxborough during the summer.
Worse for Belichick is that such comments undermine the marketing scheme he and North Carolina have hatched to label the Tar Heels as the 33rd NFL team. If you’re trying to become the place for future pros to learn the trade, doubling down on being the one who is also openly hostile against one of those teams might not be the selling point you think it is. North Carolina won’t be hurt by barring the Patriots scouts, but its players will be.
You can bet that fact will get brought up by opposing coaches whenever they go head to head for a player in recruiting. It could well be a deciding factor for some if the monetary offers are similar.
Why pick North Carolina to develop you for the pros when it is already limiting your exposure to teams before you even step on campus? Those scouts will talk plenty among each other, so any negative opinion of Tar Heels players is far more likely to spread than it normally would if access is level.
Belichick is already paying the 33rd team stuff lip service by giving NFL personnel blank depth charts and preventing even the non-Patriots staffers from having meaningful access to practices. It’s a sharp contrast to what old friend Nick Saban did in rolling out the red carpet to anybody who had an NFL shield on their polo and making Alabama the place to go as the real gold standard for college programs trying to get their players drafted.
It’s bad enough there may be more future pros down the road in Durham and Raleigh than Chapel Hill right now for Belichick. It’s even worse if scouts won’t even bother to make the trip to North Carolina’s campus because a head coach simply won’t let a grudge go.
That gets back to the larger forces as one cannot underestimate how much the ending in New England, and the way the Kraft family treated Belichick in the months and years since, is living rent free in the future Hall of Famer’s head.
It was a factor when Belichick attempted to get NFL jobs last offseason before finally settling on North Carolina. It was present when he responded to comments on a podcast in July and when the hoodie directly took a shot at his former bosses in August by noting “there’s no owner, there’s no owner’s son,” around his program now.
It’s clearly still there after Belichick won his first game Saturday, and all people will remember is his stiff-arm to his old club instead of anything that transpired in the 20–3 victory over Charlotte.
Belichick has not gotten over his firing and now it’s bleeding over to impact his current job. This isn’t just a grudge held by some coach who’s been knocked down the ladder from the NFL to college because that’s the only place that will take him. It’s a vendetta to have the last word—even though history isn’t written by the losers who are finally shown the door after going 29–38 across four forgettable seasons that led us to this point.
It’s time for Belichick to stop obsessing about the Patriots and let it go. Nothing is going to change his exit from New England just as nothing is going to take away the reputation he earned from those six Super Bowl rings.
Once he does that, then we may finally be able to start calling Belichick the North Carolina head coach without tagging on his former accomplishments as a necessary qualifier. Both the hoodie and his current employer would be well served once that winds up being the case.
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This article was originally published on www.si.com as Bill Belichick’s Grudge Against Patriots Is Undermining North Carolina Job.