Belichick, Tar Heels 2025 win total on the move at FanDuel

Bill Belichick had seemingly been waiting for the right opportunity to return to an NFL sideline. Instead, the six-time Super Bowl-winning head coach is headed to the college ranks to take over at North Carolina.

The school announced it had reached a five-year deal with Belichick on Wednesday night, roughly a week after Belichick’s name surfaced as an unlikely candidate to replace the program’s winningest coach in Mack Brown. The deal requires approval by UNC trustees as well as the UNC public system’s governors; an introductory news conference has yet to be scheduled.

Moving on from the 73-year-old Brown to hire the 72-year-old Belichick means UNC is turning to a coach who has never worked at the college level, yet had incredible success in the NFL alongside quarterback Tom Brady throughout most of his 24-year tenure with the Patriots, which ended last season.

There’s also at least a small family tie to the UNC program for Belichick; his late father, Steve, was an assistant coach for the Tar Heels from 1953-55.

“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.

He’s arriving on campus at a time of rapid changes in college athletics, from free player movement through the transfer portal and athletes’ ability to cash in on endorsements to the looming arrival of revenue sharing. Consider the Belichick hiring a novel approach by the school to rethinking how it will approach those challenges, led by someone known for success at the highest level of the sport.

“We know that college athletics is changing, and those changes require new and innovative thinking,” UNC athletics director Bubba Cunningham said in a statement. “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."

In 2023 North Carolina won six games, going 3-5 in conference games and finished 13th in the ACC.

The Tar Heels win total on FanDuel opened Wednesday afternoon set at 6.5 wins with both the over and under at -113 odds. 

Since then the total has been bumped to 7.5 with the over at +124. 

Belichick holds 333 career regular-season and postseason wins in the NFL, trailing only Don Shula’s 347 for the NFL record, while his 31 playoff wins are the most in league history.

He’s the second coach to win a Super Bowl and then later become a college head coach; Bill Walsh won three Super Bowls with the San Francisco 49ers and later went 17-17-1 at Stanford from 1992-94.

He had been linked to NFL jobs in the time since his departure from the Patriots, notably the Atlanta Falcons in January. That’s why word of Belichick’s conversations with UNC — first reported by Inside Carolina and confirmed by the AP last week — stirred such surprise as an unexpected and unconventional candidate.

But the two sides had been in discussions for several days working on terms before finally reaching an agreement to cap what once seemed an improbable outcome.

Belichick said Monday on ESPN’s “The Pat McAfee Show” that he’d had “a couple of good conversations” with UNC chancellor Lee Roberts and that he’d spent much of the past year taking a “longer look” 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 Monday. “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.”