When Bill Belichick wrapped up a miserable 4-8 debut in Chapel Hill, he didn’t pretend it was anything else. The North Carolina football team has a ton of work to do, and fast. The offseason was already going to be about rebuilding credibility and talent, but the portal just took a real bite out of that plan.

Hayes Fawcett reported that UNC EDGE Tyler Thompson plans to enter the transfer portal, per his agent via On3Sports. Thompson wasn’t just another name on the depth chart.

The 6-foot-4, 245-pound defender put up 26 tackles, seven sacks, eight tackles for loss, and two forced fumbles this season. He also earned an 85.0 PFF grade, the highest on the team, and finished fourth in the ACC in sacks. For a roster that struggled to stack positives, losing a player with that kind of production and grading is brutal.

It also lands at the worst possible time, because Belichick is already reshaping the staff and the identity of the program.

After the offense sputtered through the season, UNC moved on from offensive coordinator Freddie Kitchens and special teams coordinator Mike Priefer, leaving Stephen Belichick in place as defensive coordinator. That puts even more pressure on the next hires and the portal additions to be instant-impact, not long-term projects.

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And that leads to the other major track of this offseason: the OC search.

Names being linked to North Carolina include Bobby Petrino, Chip Kelly, and Kevin Decker. Petrino brings recent high-level production, Decker is coming off an explosive run at Old Dominion, and Kelly is the headline option given his long-standing connection to Belichick.

Whoever gets that job is essentially being asked to build the offensive blueprint for Belichick’s college reboot.

Still, none of that changes the immediate reality: you can’t fix a program if your best pieces keep leaving. Thompson hitting the portal is the kind of loss that forces UNC to win in roster management before it can win on Saturdays.