Bill Belichick’s first season at North Carolina started with a lot of excitement and ended with a lot of questions.

The Tar Heels opened their season against TCU by marching 83 yards for a touchdown and taking a 7-0 lead. Then everything fell apart. TCU scored 41 unanswered points, rolled up 542 total yards, and walked out of Chapel Hill with a 48-14 win that made it clear Belichick had plenty of work to do.

The rematch to kick off this season felt completely different.

A year later, North Carolina opened Belichick’s second season by grinding out a 15-10 win over TCU in the rain in Dublin. It wasn’t flashy, and it certainly wasn’t easy. But this was the kind of game Belichick built his reputation on.

North Carolina controlled field position, came through on fourth down, and refused to give TCU easy opportunities. When the Horned Frogs threatened late, the Tar Heels’ defense held twice inside the 10-yard line. Then, with the ball back and 4:05 left, North Carolina’s offense kept the ball long enough to close the game out.

One win doesn’t erase a 4-8 debut season. It does give Belichick something his program badly needed: proof that his players may finally be starting to understand how he wants them to play.

The Defense Turned The Game Around

TCU didn’t seem too bothered by North Carolina’s defense early on.

Jeremy Payne ripped off a 48-yard run on the Horned Frogs’ opening possession, setting up a field goal. Then a rough 33-yard punt return handed TCU another short field, and Jon Denman finished that drive with a two-yard touchdown run to make it 10-3.

That score came with four minutes left in the first quarter. TCU didn't score again.

North Carolina shut the Horned Frogs out over their final eight possessions. The defense forced three turnovers on downs, recovered a fumble, and held TCU to just 26 rushing yards in the second half. A year after giving up 542 total yards in this matchup, UNC held the Horned Frogs to 281.

And this wasn’t just some random offense that never scores. TCU had scored at least 28 points in 30 straight nonconference regular-season games. The Horned Frogs had also put up 30 or more in 10 consecutive season openers. Both streaks ended in Dublin.

The biggest difference came when TCU got close to the goal line.

North Carolina allowed opponents to convert 24 of 32 fourth downs in 2025, which is a horrible 75% success rate. TCU converted just one of five on Saturday. Two of those stops came deep in UNC territory, with the Tar Heels clinging to a five-point lead.

Payne was stuffed for a one-yard loss on fourth-and-1 from the five late in the third quarter. Then, in the fourth, TCU put together a 15-play drive that took nearly eight minutes and got all the way down to the 10-yard line. But Jaden Craig’s fourth-down pass fell incomplete as pressure closed in around him.

Those were the kinds of plays North Carolina couldn’t consistently make last season. The Tar Heels lost three games by one possession and never led at halftime against a Power Four opponent. This time, the defense came through twice when one mistake could’ve completely changed the game.

Belichick pointed to that difference after the win:

We got a lot of big plays on fourth down, something we didn’t do too much of last year.

That improvement started with Xavier Lewis making life miserable for just about everyone in a TCU uniform.

Xavier Lewis Became An Every-Down Problem

Lewis played in all 12 games as a freshman, but his role was pretty limited. He was mostly a situational pass rusher, with 130 of his 167 defensive snaps coming on passing downs. He finished the season with eight tackles and half a sack.

That changed in his first start as a sophomore.

Lewis finished with seven tackles, 4.5 tackles for loss and two sacks. He nearly matched his entire freshman tackle total in one game and had more tackles for loss than any Tar Heel had recorded in a game since 2024.

Even those numbers don’t really capture how much trouble he caused.

Lewis blew up a second-quarter run for a four-yard loss, helping force the punt that the TCU long snapper eventually sent sailing through the end zone for a safety. He teamed up with Isaiah Johnson to stop TCU on fourth-and-1 at the five-yard line. Then, on the final fourth-down stand, Lewis chased Jon Craig out of the pocket and helped force him into a rushed throw.

TCU couldn’t just slide their protection toward Lewis, either. Melkart Abou Jaoude, who led the ACC with 10.5 sacks last season, came free for a blindside strip sack early in the third quarter. Jaylen Harvey recovered it at the TCU 31, setting up Aeron Burrell’s 28-yard field goal and the game’s final points.

Lewis also had plenty of help from the guys around him. One of his sacks came on a stunt with Trey Giddens, who tied up two blockers and opened a clean lane to Craig. Behind them, Derek McDonald handled the green-dot responsibilities and led the defense with 11 tackles in his UNC debut.

It was a great team effort from the defensive line

That defensive front gave Belichick something real to work with. TCU still got 142 rushing yards from Jeremy Payne, but 48 of those came on that one first-quarter run. Once North Carolina adjusted to the Horned Frogs’ outside rushing attack, the running lanes pretty much disappeared.

Lewis was named ACC Defensive Lineman of the Week. More importantly, the former preferred walk-on showed he could handle a much bigger role. He played 53 of the defense’s 71 snaps, including 28 against the run, after spending most of his freshman season as a third-down specialist.

Belichick trusted him to become an every-down player. Lewis made that decision look pretty smart.

This Finally Looked Like A Belichick Team

TCU’s mistakes were a big reason North Carolina walked away with the win — there's no doubt about it. The Horned Frogs committed 11 penalties for 89 yards, lost a fumble, and gave UNC two points when a snap sailed over their punter’s head. The Tar Heels’ offense scored just 13 points on thier own.

North Carolina wasn’t exactly flawless, either. The Tar Heels lost two fumbles, ran for only 90 yards, and missed a field goal that would’ve pushed the lead to eight. Billy Edwards Jr. completed 16 of 28 passes for 232 yards in his UNC debut, but the offense didn’t score after Aeron Burrell’s field goal with 10:04 left in the third quarter.

Still, there’s something to be said for being the team that didn’t completely lose their grip on the game.

North Carolina committed just three penalties for 20 yards. That’s a pretty big deal for a team that averaged 62.6 penalty yards per game last season and finished with 11 penalties for 129 yards against NC State. Belichick pointed to the lack of pre-snap and post-whistle penalties as one of the biggest differences in Dublin.

The contrast was especially obvious over the last four minutes of this one.

After the defense made their last stand, Demon June picked up five yards and then eight more to give UNC some breathing room. A delay-of-game penalty briefly put the Tar Heels in a hole, but Edwards answered by finding Jelani Thurman for 25 yards on second-and-12.

TCU eventually forced a fourth-and-1 with one second left. North Carolina didn’t even have to run the play. The Tar Heels decided to use a hard count and got TCU defensive tackle Markis Deal jumped offside. Belichick started celebrating on the sideline before the officials had finished making the call.

That was a pretty fitting way to end the game. UNC didn’t overpower TCU, and they certainly didn’t light up the scoreboard. The Tar Heels just stayed patient and waited for the Horned Frogs to make one more mistake.

That doesn’t mean the Belichick experiment is suddenly fixed. Not even close. TCU was breaking in a new quarterback and North Carolina has a much tougher schedule ahead. Clemson, Notre Dame and the rest of the ACC schedule will tell us a lot more about this team than one strange afternoon overseas.

Still, at least year 2 started with North Carolina looking a little more like Belichick’s team.

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