For Halloween this year, Bill Belichick got a different kind of treat.
In the middle of his taxing and occasionally disastrous first season at North Carolina, Belichick and his Tar Heels were able to pick up their first win in ACC play this season, going on the road to knock off Syracuse 27-10 on Friday, Oct. 31 at the JMA Wireless Dome.
The victory snapped a four-game losing streak for North Carolina, which improved its record to 3-5 overall and 1-3 in the ACC.
Belichick’s maiden voyage in college football hasn’t gone quite how his employer expected when it hired the six-time Super Bowl champion head coach last December.
The Tar Heels lost their first three games against Power Four opponents by a combined score of 120-33 and were more notable for what they were doing off the field than on it, whether it was the scrapping of a planned series about the program on Hulu or reports of general manager Michael Lombardi taking a fundraising trip to Saudi Arabia.
In recent weeks, though, a North Carolina team that had become a punchline has looked markedly improved. The Tar Heels came agonizingly close to wins against Cal and Virginia this month, losing by a combined four points. Against the Cavaliers last Saturday, North Carolina came up inches short of what would have been a game-winning two-point conversion in overtime against a top-20 opponent.
On Friday, that progress finally resulted in a win.
The Tar Heels’ defense continued to impress, holding Syracuse to just 147 total yards and 2.9 yards per play. Over its past three games, North Carolina is allowing only 15.7 points per game.
What has been an impotent offense for much of the season showed a spark against the Orange, putting up 425 yards and 27 points, both of which were season highs against an FBS opponent. Freshman running back Demon June carried much of the load, racking up 182 total yards and two touchdowns, including a 72-yard touchdown reception off a screen pass from quarterback Gio Lopez.
A Syracuse team that beat Clemson by two touchdowns on the road back in September has struggled since losing quarterback Steve Angeli to a season-ending injury. The Orange have lost five games in a row while averaging only 12 points per contest.
The victory wasn’t just a morale boost for Belichick and his squad.
With four regular-season games remaining, the Tar Heels are still in contention for the postseason, needing to go 3-1 the rest of the way to get to bowl eligibility. It’s not totally out of the realm of possibility. They have two games remaining against teams that don’t have winning records, 3-5 Stanford and 4-4 NC State, though they’d also need at least one win against 5-2 Wake Forest or 4-3 Duke.
If nothing else, their coach is bullish about what awaits.
‘Let’s get used to it. We’re gonna win a lot more games around here, OK,’ Belichick said to his players in the locker room after the game. ‘But you can see the potential we have. We just gotta keep working, keep grinding, fix a few little things here and there, and things are gonna be a lot different going forward.’