Bill Belichick's first season of college football with North Carolina could hardly have gone any worse. After going just 4-8 in 2025, the six-time Super Bowl champion has already found his first scapegoat, firing offensive coordinator Freddie Kitchens after one year.
Belichick and the Tar Heels relieved Kitchens of his duties Friday morning, On3 Sports reported. The 51-year-old has been with North Carolina since 2023 and ended the 2024 season as the team's interim head coach after Mack Brown's firing.
Belichick also fired special teams coordinator Mike Priefer after one season on the job. Before the 2025 season, Priefer, who has over a decade of experience as a special teams coordinator in the NFL, had not coached since 2022.
North Carolina finished last in the ACC with just 288.0 total yards per game and second-to-last with 19.3 points per game. The Tar Heels reached 20 points in just three of their 10 games against Power Four opponents, all coming against bottom-five defenses in the conference.
Kitchens was one of the few coaches Belichick retained from Brown's previous staff. Belichick anointed Kitchens as his offensive coordinator, a role the latter had not previously served since ending the 2018 season with the Cleveland Browns in an interim capacity. Kitchens had never previously been a full-time offensive coordinator.
Although Kitchens is best known as the former head coach of the Browns, he has spent the last four years of his career in college football. The former Alabama quarterback returned to the FBS as a senior analyst with South Carolina in 2022 before joining Brown's staff as North Carolina's tight ends coach and run game coordinator.
By firing Kitchens and Priefer, the only coordinator Belichick will retain is his son, defensive coordinator Stephen Belichick.
