5 Questions for a North Carolina Tar Heels Beat Writer

Grant Chachere, beat writer for North Carolina Tar Heels on SI, also has some familiarity with Cal, which will host the Heels on Friday night.

Chachere’s father, Garret, was an assistant coach for Sonny Dykes at Cal a decade ago and has great memories of his high school years watching the Bears.

As we do weekly during the football season, we sought out Chachere to answer five questions about the Tar Heels, who bring a 2-3 record and a lot of off-the-field baggage to Berkeley.

Here goes:

1. Describe the expectations of UNC fans when Bill Belichick was hired and what their mood is now after a disappointing 2-3 start and what has been called a dysfunctional atmosphere?

Chachere said fans expected big things after Belichick’s arrival, some projecting as many as 10 wins and a place in the College Football Playoff. Then the season began with a 48-14 home loss to TCU and everything changed.

“When I watched that game, it was like watching 2014 Cal, except instead of the offense being high-flying with Jared Goff it was bad,” he said.

The Tar Heels’ most recent loss, 38-10 to Clemson, could have been much worse, Chachere said. “Dabo (Swinney) really called off the dogs early. It should have been in the 50s or 60s for Clemson.”

Beyond the lopsided scores, “This is a Bill Belichick North Carolina team that is really undisciplined, there’s no identity,” he said. “That’s something I never would have said about a Bill Belichick team before the season.”

2. What are the Tar Heels’ biggest shortcomings in games? Where are they most vulnerable? How much of this is tied to the perception that Belichick’s first transfer portal recruiting class was just not good enough?

“Where do I start with the shortcomings?” he said, before reciting a series of gruesome offensive statistics by the Tar Heels. “They’re either near or at the bottom in terms of offense numbers.

“Defensively, the numbers are kind of skewed because of the Richmond and Charlotte games,” he said, referring to wins over sub-par opponents.

In particular, the Heels have struggled to stop the pass against Power 4 opponents.

“The best thing they do is special teams,” Chachere said.

“Some of it is because of issues with the transfer portal,” he said, citing a report by The Athletic that quarterback Chandler Morris, a well-traveled transfer player who has led Virginia to a No. 18 national ranking, was interested in UNC but turned away.

3. What has been Belichick’s reaction to how things are unraveling? Is he able to instill faith in his team and fans that things will turn around? And what was the reaction last week to him and the athletic department issuing statements to assure folks he has the university’s support and is not going anywhere?

“There’s so many distractions going on,” said Chachere, who then listed off several of them.

He said the university is trying to create a united front on Belichick but that there seem to be factions that want him to stay and others that would welcome his departure.

“It’s really overshadowed what has happened on the field, which has been very sad,” Chachere said. “For a guy like Bellichick, who is the no nonsense, no distractions, no days off, the blue-collar type of guy . . . all of a sudden you’ve got all these distractions.”

4. How much has Belichick’s 24-year-old girlfriend Jordon Hudson been a distraction? Or has the team’s performance relegated that to a side-show plot?

“She really hasn’t been that involved in the program,” he said. “Sometimes we might see her pop up in the press conference, but that’s usually after the game.

“The Jordon issue’s not a big issue. However, when your team gets its butt kicked and all of a sudden you see other teams making fun of Bill Bellichick and his relationship, yeah, that will kind of set some fans off.”

The bigger issues include players allegedly fighting in the locker room all the way to the sense that the administration wanted to hire Bellichick but athletic director Bubba Cunningham wanted to conduct a traditional coaching search.

5. What is a reasonable projection for how the rest of this season will unfold and what kind of final win-loss record Carolina can achieve? And what are a couple of keys to them coming 2,800 miles west and having success at Cal on Friday night?

“How many games could they win and, to be honest with you, could they win another game?” Chachere said. “You’ve got Cal this week and Cal’s a very decent team. Plus the travel and the different time zones.”

Chachere said the huge buyout will be a factor impacting whether Carolina opts to move on from Belichick. Besides that, there are so many other good jobs open this offseason — including Penn State, Virginia Tech and UCLA already — prompting the question of whether UNC could compete against those schools for top coaching candidates.

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