Bill Belichick and the North Carolina Tar Heels notched a 20-15 final score over the Stanford Cardinal on Saturday, improving their 2025 season record to 4-5.
This victory marks the second in a row for the Tar Heels, building off last weekend’s 27-10 win over Syracuse.
UNC quarterback Gio Lopez put together as solid performance, completing 18 of his 25 pass attempts for 203 yards, two touchdowns and zero interceptions. The Tar Heels’ defense also stepped up in a big way, recording a whopping nine quarterback sacks on Stanford’s Elijah Brown and forcing two turnovers (one interception, one fumble).
Belichick’s defensive front was led by three sacks from defensive end Melkart Abou Jaoude, and three more from linebacker Tyler Thompson. Abou Jaoude now has 10 sacks through the Tar Heels’ first nine games of the season.
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Belichick is happy to see his team finally trending in the right direction, but the Hall-of-Fame coach isn’t satisfied with three games remaining on the regular-season schedule.
“In the end, it was a damn good win all the way around,” Belchick said in the postgame locker room. “We’re going to keep building on that one — We’ve got the three games in North Carolina now. This is the heart of our schedule, we need to play our best football, have our best week of practice, play our best football on Saturday.
“Get ready to get Wake [Forest] here. Get ready to get Wake. Let’s keep grinding now. We can’t stop. We’ve got to keep grinding, keep getting better, keep believing in ourselves — believing in the process. Let’s make it three in a row.”
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North Carolina will now close out its regular-season schedule with an away game against the Wake Forest Demon Deacons, a home game against the Duke Blue Devils and an away game against the North Carolina State Wolfpack.
Saturday’s game against Wake Forest will kickoff at 4:30 p.m. ET in Winston-Salem.
