Sources – Bill Belichick talks to UNC about head coaching job

Bill Belichick, who won six Super Bowl championships with the New England Patriots, has held talks with North Carolina about the Tar Heels’ head coaching job, sources told ESPN on Thursday.

Belichick, 72, retired from football this year after leaving the Patriots following the 2023 season.

Sources told ESPN that Belichick, who spent his career in the NFL, wants to coach again and is open to listening to people at the college and NFL levels.

UNC fired Mack Brown on November 26 after six seasons with the Tar Heels. The 73-year-old Brown, a College Football Hall of Famer, was in his second stint at the school. Belichick is just a year younger than Brown, who was the oldest coach in the FBS this season.

The Tar Heels went 44-33 under Brown from 2019 to 2024 and finished 6-6 this season. Brown will not coach in UNC’s bowl game, and Freddie Kitchens, a former Cleveland Browns coach who served as UNC’s running game coordinator and tight ends coach the past two seasons, is serving as interim head coach while school resumes looking for a replacement.

Belichick is by far the biggest name to come up in the North Carolina search, and sources say there was real interest on both sides. But Tulane’s Jon Sumrall was also at or near the top of North Carolina’s list and was scheduled to formally speak with school officials after the Green Wave’s AAC championship game against Army on Friday. Other candidates for the job include Iowa State’s Matt Campbell, Georgia defensive coordinator Glenn Schumann and Steve Wilks, who was head coach of the Arizona Cardinals in 2018 and interim coach of the Carolina Panthers in 2022. Wilks was a volunteer assistant at Charlotte this season.

North Carolina had originally targeted Pittsburgh Steelers offensive coordinator Arthur Smith, a UNC graduate, but he rejected the Tar Heels’ advances and instead wanted to stay in the NFL.

During Belichick’s coaching hiatus, he caused a stir in the media this season. He is a regular on “ManningCast” on ESPN’s “Monday Night Football” and “The Pat McAfee Show” on ESPN, and is also part of the “Inside the NFL” crew on the CW Network.

Belichick was with the Patriots for 24 seasons. As Bill Parcells’ defensive coordinator, he was also part of two Super Bowl-winning teams with the New York Giants. Belichick’s 333 wins as a head coach are second all-time in the NFL behind Don Shula’s 347.

Although Belichick never coached in college, his father Steve was a longtime assistant at the U.S. Naval Academy and Belichick grew up in Annapolis, Maryland.

InsideCarolina.com was the first to report that Belichick had interviewed with UNC.

Information from ESPN’s Adam Schefter was used in this report.