North Carolina’s preparation for the season opener took another hit Thursday, with the Tar Heels announcing that defensive coordinator Stephen Belichick is on medical leave and will be away from the team in the immediate future.
In his place, North Carolina said the defensive staff will handle Belichick’s duties collectively. Bill Belichick, the Tar Heels’ coach and Stephen’s father, told Brian Murphy of WRAL-TV in Raleigh that his son would return “as soon as possible.”
Stephen Belichick, 39, has been North Carolina’s defensive coordinator since 2025. His path to Chapel Hill ran through a long NFL run, most of it spent working under his father with the Patriots.
His coaching career began in New England before the 2012 season after four years on Rutgers’s men’s lacrosse team, along with a brief stint as a football long snapper. He spent more than a decade moving through that staff and later reached a notable peak as the Patriots’ defensive backs coach in 2019, when Stephon Gilmore won AP Defensive Player of the Year.
After Bill Belichick and New England split following the 2023 season, Stephen landed with Jedd Fisch at Washington. Fisch, who had been the Patriots’ quarterbacks coach in 2020, hired him as defensive coordinator, and Stephen helped steady the Huskies through the drop-off after coach Kalen DeBoer’s departure. Washington’s defense was average, but the transition was not a total collapse.
North Carolina brought Stephen in to join Bill in 2025, and the defense did show some progress. The Tar Heels finished 66th in FBS in scoring defense, giving up 24.5 points per game, an improvement both in ranking and in average from the year before.
The timing, though, is rough. North Carolina opens in just over three weeks against TCU on Aug. 29 in Dublin, and the Tar Heels will also face Clemson and Notre Dame early in the season. That’s a stretch that demands full participation from the entire defensive operation.
The staff issue at North Carolina goes beyond Stephen Belichick. General manager Michael Lombardi is also out on paid administrative leave after a reported human resources complaint.
When North Carolina hired Bill Belichick, it was stepping into a high-risk situation. The school had been publicly linked to then-Tulane coach Jon Sumrall in late 2024, and Sumrall eventually waited a year, reached the CFP, and is now at Florida. Bill’s first season ended 4-8, the program’s worst record since Larry Fedora’s final year in 2018.
So with one major staff member on medical leave and another on administrative leave, North Carolina is entering the season with real uncertainty around the top of the program. The Tar Heels will need the whole staff to settle things quickly if they want a cleaner start in 2026 than they got a year ago, when TCU rolled past them 48-14 on Labor Day.
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Lily played at TCU from 1958 to 1960 before a standout NFL career and later induction into both the TCU Hall of Fame and the Pro Football Hall of Fame. Tomlinson, who starred from 1997 to 2000, left campus with multiple rushing records, a Doak Walker Award, and eventually his own place in the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 2017. For TCU fans, the interesting part is less the recognition itself than the company these legends keep on lists like this, where the next name in the conversation is always the one everybody will want to see. [Read more 🡒]