No joke: UNC pulls an upset in Ireland, and Bill Belichick suddenly looks better
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For the past year, UNC football has been a punchline.
On Saturday, in the Year 2 season opener of the Bill Belichick era, the Tar Heels punched back.
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UNC’s 15-10 upset of TCU in rainy Ireland provided a neat reversal of the first game Belichick ever coached for the baby blue, when UNC got blasted 48-14 by this very same TCU team.
In that one, the Tar Heels scored first and then gave up 41 consecutive points. It was a nationally-televised humiliation in Kenan Stadium, and it ushered in an embarrassment of a first season.
In this one, the Tar Heels scored first again, allowed 10 straight points and then played the sort of gritty defense under a gray Irish sky that wins you a lot of football games. There aren’t many choices here, but that was definitely the best win that Belichick has had at UNC so far.
With the offense doing just enough and TCU imploding in the same way UNC so often did a year ago, the Tar Heels pulled off this feel-good upset despite only scoring a single touchdown. TCU, after taking a 10-3 lead in the first quarter, would never score again.
Was it pretty? Not unless you like rain and defense. Was it significant?
Absolutely.
Remember, since Belichick has gotten here, UNC went 4-8 in its first season and was widely — and correctly — derided for a variety of off-field reasons that I won’t go into again here.
While Belichick has said repeatedly he expects this UNC team to be better, the media certainly didn’t believe it: UNC was picked to finish 15th out of 17 teams in the ACC media poll.
TCU, meanwhile, has also had the sort of player turnover now common in college football, but was still supposed to be better than the Tar Heels and entered the game as a 7.5-point favorite. The Horned Frogs weren’t ranked, but they weren’t that far away from being ranked.
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But it was TCU that looked unsure and out of sorts.
The Horned Frogs ended up with 11 penalties for 100 yards (80 penalty yards more than UNC had). TCU’s long snapper sailed a snap over the punter’s head, which gave UNC a safety that would prove significant. TCU mismanaged the clock at the end of the first half. TCU did all sorts of things wrong, including jumping offside on 4th-and-1 for the clinching first down.
UNC was far from perfect, but new Tar Heel quarterback Billy Edwards Jr. completed passes of 20 and 35 yards on his first two attempts and generally outplayed TCU’s quarterback by a wide margin. Edwards finished 16-for-28 for 232 yards, with no TDs and, more importantly, no turnovers.
Edwards also drew that final, game-clinching penalty on a hard count, with 40 seconds to go. That penalty drew an exuberant first-down signal from Belichick, who is normally as stoic as an Easter Island statue.
The biggest story, though, was UNC’s defense.
“I don’t think I played my best football,” Edwards told an ESPN interviewer on the field after the game, “but hats off to the defense. They kept us in it the whole game. Big-time stops in the fourth quarter.”
Playing without defensive coordinator Steve Belichick — who didn’t make the trip to Ireland because he is on leave for undisclosed medical reasons — UNC didn’t allow any points on TCU’s final eight drives.
Was this proof that hiring Belichick was the right decision? Of course not.
There will need to be a lot more good days like this one to prove that. And let’s not forget UNC’s difficult schedule, which includes Notre Dame, Miami, Clemson and Louisville.
But to be in this spot, at 1-0 after Week 0, is a major boost for a UNC football team that badly needed one.
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This was no joke.
This was progress.
This story was originally published August 29, 2026 at 3:57 PM.
