North Carolina will be without defensive coordinator Stephen Belichick in the immediate future as he is on medical leave, the Tar Heels announced Thursday morning. In the interim, the team’s defensive staff will fill Belichick’s role collectively.
Bill Belichick, North Carolina’s coach and Stephen’s father, told Brian Murphy of WRAL-TV in Raleigh, when prompted, that Stephen would return “as soon as possible.”
Stephen, 39, has served as the Tar Heels’ defensive coordinator since 2025. Before that, he forged a lengthy career in the NFL—mostly under his father with the Patriots.
For North Carolina, Stephen’s absence couldn’t have come at a less opportune time as it tries to make sense of year two of its grand Belichick experience.
Stephen worked under Bill with the Patriots before moving to the college ranks
New England hired Stephen as a defensive assistant before the 2012 season, following four years on Rutgers’s men’s lacrosse team (and a brief spell as a football long snapper). He bounced around that staff for over a decade, landing a major coup as the Patriots’ defensive backs coach in 2019 when cornerback Stephon Gilmore won the AP Defensive Player of the Year award.
When Bill and New England parted ways after the 2023 season, Stephen needed a new home. Newly anointed Washington coach Jedd Fisch—the Patriots’ quarterbacks coach in 2020—hired Stephen as his defensive coordinator, and although the Huskies’ defense was average, Stephen helped stabilize the inevitable downshift from the program’s phenomenal ’23 after the departure of coach Kalen DeBoer.
In ’25, the Tar Heels hired Stephen to join Bill. North Carolina finished 66th in FBS in scoring defense, allowing 24.5 points per game—a year-over-year improvement in both rank and average.
From a pure football standpoint, Stephen’s absence couldn’t come at a worse time for the Tar Heels
Strictly speaking: the season is about to begin, and North Carolina needs its defensive coordinator. The Tar Heels kick off in just over three weeks, against TCU on Aug. 29 in Dublin. They’ll need all hands on deck both in that game and in two other crucial early-season clashes with Clemson and Notre Dame.
North Carolina, however, is not just missing Stephen in the upper echelons of its program. The Tar Heels are minus general manager Michael Lombardi, who is on paid administrative leave in the wake of a reported human resources complaint.
When North Carolina hired Bill, it took a risk. The Tar Heels were very publicly connected in late 2024 to then-Tulane coach Jon Sumrall, who waited a year, made a CFP, and now finds himself at Florida. Bill’s first year ended 4–8, the program’s worst record since coach Larry Fedora’s last season in 2018.
Now, due to circumstances both in the program’s control (Lombardi, reportedly) and outside of it (Stephen), North Carolina is teetering on the brink. It is up to the Tar Heels’ staff collectively to ensure a smooth start to 2026—something that didn’t happen a year ago, when the Horned Frogs demolished North Carolina 48–14 in front of a national television audience on Labor Day.
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