Bill Belichick comes agonizingly close to first ACC win as North Carolina falls inches short against Virginia

North Carolina head coach Bill Belichick was hunting for his first Atlantic Coast Conference (ACC) win with a two-point conversion attempt in overtime against No. 16 Virginia.

Instead, the Cavaliers' Ja'son Prevard stopped Tar Heels running back Ben Hall just inches short of the goal line to preserve a 17-16 win and keep UVa's own College Football Playoff hopes alive.

Virginia took a 17-10 overtime lead with a 1-yard touchdown run by J’Mari Taylor, which proved to be the winning score. North Carolina’s Davion Gause had a 9-yard touchdown catch in overtime to cut the lead to a single point and put Belichick in position for his first ACC victory.

With the loss, the Tar Heels fall to 2-5 and 0-3 in conference play. Now they move on to face a struggling Syracuse team coming off a 41-16 loss to Georgia Tech.

The Cavaliers (7-1, 4-0 ACC) head to the Bay Area next week to face Cal. 

Belichick’s 24-year-0old girlfriend, Jordon Hudson, was on hand once again and was even seen having her photo taken alongside an ACC official before the game. 

Chandler Morris threw for 200 yards with one touchdown and one interception for the Cavaliers, who are off to their best start since 2007.

Gio Lopez finished with 208 yards, one touchdown and two interceptions for the Tar Heels, who lost their fourth straight.

For the second time in two weeks, a goal-line gaffe by North Carolina proved costly when wide receiver Kobe Paysour fumbled at the 1 while stretching for the pylon early in the first quarter. The football trickled out of the end zone, resulting in a touchback.

A week earlier in a loss to California, Nathan Leacock coughed up the ball in similar fashion as the Tar Heels were on the verge of grabbing a fourth-quarter lead and possibly their first ACC win under coach Bill Belichick.

The teams traded field goals before Virginia took a 10-3 lead with 6:36 left in the second quarter on Trell Harris’ 30-yard touchdown grab. North Carolina tied it again on a 1-yard run by Lopez just 1:24 before halftime.

North Carolina turned it over once more in the red zone later in the game when defensive end Mitchell Melton picked off Lopez at the Cavaliers’ 5. The Tar Heels’ five red-zone turnovers are tied for most in FBS.

The loss comes after behind-the-scenes footage of  Hudson humiliating producers of an NFL podcast while micro-managing Belichick emerged. The couple was caught on a hot mic moaning that the show's organizers 'can't do s***.'

The footage, leaked hours before Belichick leads UNC in a vital college game on Friday night, was recorded on the set of NFL Films studios in September 2024. It features Hudson repeatedly scrutinizing graphics on a screen that would illustrate talking points raised by Belichick, with her tone growing increasingly patronizing.

Hudson and Belichick were on the set of 'Coach' in New Jersey - a podcast Belichick recorded with former Detroit Lions head coach Matt Patricia, who throughout looks deeply uncomfortable with Hudson's involvement. The clip, first reported by Pablo Torre , shows Hudson initially questioning why Belichick would discuss a team trying to keep an opponent out of the end zone.

'Is it necessary to say "keep them out of the end zone?" I feel like that's pretty self-explanatory,' Hudson says. 'I don't know if there's an additional point. Should it say red zone? You guys haven't reviewed these before this moment here?'

In a separate discussion moaning about the graphics, Hudson says: 'I thought this was going to look like it was scribbled into a playbook. This feels like a "how many people does it take to screw in a lightbulb" situation.'

For all Hudson's efforts to asset herself as the most significant figure in the room, she then was undone by a basic mistake. In a moment between takes, she and Belichick are unaware his mic is on as they discuss the setup around them.

'I don’t know how they have four full-time graphics people,' Hudson said, to which Belichick responded: 'They can't do s***.'

Hudson also tells producers out of shot of the camera that she can make slicker graphics than what they have managed to create.

'I mean, damn... if somebody puts on a clock, I can create this in five minutes. Will you give me two grand to do that?' she asks, as Belichick chuckled. Patricia, meanwhile, just awkwardly scrolled away on his laptop while Hudson continued to insert herself into the planning.

Then, in an especially tone-deaf suggestion, Hudson says: 'I said that there was a certain way we wanted these to look... based upon what it was they were talking about. This would have graphics that would almost look like they have ripped the page out of their playbook and slapped it on the screen.

'Can we do that (design the graphics) with them? And sit there and say say, you know, as they are doing it, that's wrong? Can we set up a meeting with the entire graphics team and anybody that has anything to do with this?'

The footage, while not quite as excruciating as her CBS intervention when she infamously stopped a reporter asking how Belichick and Hudson met, is still a terrible look for Hudson - and at a time when she has seemingly tried to keep a lower profile during Belichick's coaching season.

Torre said during his latest episode that CBS has 'another 30 minutes' of footage of Hudson being a menace from off camera during that notorious interview, which sparked a relentless backlash against her.

Friends of Belichick, such as NBA great Charles Barkley, said he would stage an intervention and check that his friend is ok. A former New England Patriots player, Ted Johnson, who won a Super Bowl under Belichick even questioned if his coach was 'of sound mind' in his older age to let his 49-years-younger girlfriend have so much control over him.