UNC Football: Style Points Don’t Matter to Belichick when UNC Visits Wake Forest
When Bill Belichick leads this 2025 North Carolina team into Winston-Salem on Saturday, November 15, Tar Heel fans will groan about the lack of offense, complain that Freddie Kitchens’ play-calling is terrible, and fire off a dozen tweets about how they “can’t believe we’re not going for it on 4th-and-1 at midfield” when the punt unit jogs out.
Belichick does not care about your boos. Or whether the decision is flashy. Or whether Twitter thinks it’s “aggressive enough.”
Just look back to 2001 when Belichick stuck with rookie Tom Brady over Drew Bledsoe. While Tom Brady turned out to be a sure-fire Hall of Famer, that decision at the time was not free from criticism. Safe to say: Belichick made the right call.
And that’s what Tar Heel fans need to understand. While the fan base is staring at the next three weeks, Bill is staring at one thing — Saturday. November 22nd and 29th might as well be a thousand years away. The fans and media can talk about the schedule. Belichick shrugs and goes back to practice.
Jason Staples mentioned on the Inside Carolina Game Plan Show that Saturday could deliver a new #GoACC classic — a reminder of Frank Beamer raising his arms after finishing regulation tied 0–0 against Georgia Tech.
Except if this scenario happened with Belichick?
His arms wouldn’t be raised.
He’d already be muttering, “On to overtime,” without a single thought about becoming the meme of the week.
Does North Carolina have a chance on Saturday? I want to say yes. I really do.
Yet as Greg Barnes pointed out, this fan base has no idea how to behave around a competent defense, and definitely not a coaching staff that enters games with a real plan to stop somebody. Carolina teams of the past made opposing quarterbacks look like Heisman candidates. This staff? They’ve produced more nightmares than highlight reels in the past four weeks.
Unfortunately, there’s a flip side: Iowa has been an offensive juggernaut compared to the Tar Heels this year. Gio Lopez and the offense have played like Thunder Road at Carowinds — moments of excitement, long stretches of “what are we doing,” and occasional sequences that feel like the whole thing is rolling backward.
But here’s the point:
Style points don’t matter.
Belichick doesn’t care about pretty.
He cares about winning on Saturday.
And if Carolina finds a way to win — even an ugly, old-school, Beamer-ball-without-the-raising-arms kind of win, nobody will remember the boos, the fourth-down debates, or the offensive rollercoaster. They’ll remember that Belichick’s team walked out of Winston-Salem with more points than the other guys.
