Longtime listeners of The Bill Simmons Podcast know that Michael Lombardi is a big fan of nicknames. And as he assumed the role of North Carolina’s general manager, Bill Belichick’s right-hand man issued a new moniker for the Tar Heels program.
“We consider ourselves the 33rd (NFL) team because everybody who’s involved with our program has had some form or aspect in pro football,” the ex-New England Patriots executive told reporters in February.
Lombardi has repeated the nickname on multiple occasions in the months since, including while explaining why North Carolina dropped out of being featured on the offseason version of HBO’s Hard Knocks, which seems like something an alleged NFL-like operation would want to do. Meanwhile, on the field, the Tar Heels have stumbled to a 2-3 start to their debut season under Belichick, with their losses not coming against the Chiefs, Bills, or Eagles, but rather the TCU Horned Frogs, UCF Knights, and Clemson Tigers.
To put it mildly, UNC’s operation has looked anything but professional, even in an era where players are now paid. And yet, for as underwhelming as the Tar Heels have been on the field, they’ve been even more embarrassing off of it — and not just because their 73-year-old head coach was recently featured on the cover of Us Weekly alongside his 24-year-old girlfriend.
But while it’s been easy to poke fun at college football’s most famous couple or the pettiness of Belichick’s ongoing cold war with his former employer, a new villain within North Carolina’s punchline of a season has emerged. That would be Lombardi, the ex-NFL executive-turned media darling, who as recently as last year lambasted the New York Giants front office for their Hard Knocks appearance.
“To me, it was a little bit offensive,” the former Cleveland Browns general manager told The Pat McAfee Show of the Giants’ performance on the offseason docuseries.
If Lombardi was offended by the Giants’ poor showing on HBO, one can only imagine what he’d think about a first-time college football executive who proclaims his program to be the NFL’s 33rd team only to be sitting at 2-3 with the three defeats coming by a combined 87 points. North Carolina’s lackluster performance on the field, however, has only paled in comparison to the negative publicity it has generated off the field, not all of which has come from Bill Belichick and Jordon Hudson.
The latest black mark in Chapel Hill comes via a report from On3 UNC affiliate site Inside Carolina, which revealed that the program is scrapping its previously announced behind-the-scenes docuseries, which was supposed to be available on Hulu. Lombardi — who reportedly earns a $1.5 million salary — had previously touted the Tar Heels’ plans for the project while explaining the decision not to appear on Hard Knocks.
“The problem was that we control the story we need to tell here,” Lombardi told The Pat McAfee Show in March. “And the story that we want to tell doesn’t end after we play TCU. The story that we want to tell is about how we’re rebuilding this program, how we’re going to honor the great players that have come before us. How we’re going to restore Tar Heel football and make this stadium come alive on Saturday afternoons, like a lot of the other schools in the ACC. That’s the story we want to tell.”
Clearly, the Tar Heels weren’t able to stick to the script.
The cancellation of the Hulu series, however, helped overshadow an even less flattering UNC-centric story that had circulated in the aftermath of the Tar Heels’ 38-10 loss to Clemson over the weekend. On Monday night, Raleigh’s NBC affiliate, WRAL, published a detailed report on the current state of the North Carolina program, with one source referring to it as a “complete disaster.”
WRAL’s reporting points plenty of blame at Belichick, who clearly seems overmatched as a first-time college head coach. But it also doesn’t spare Lombardi, who sources described as “rude” and “nasty.”
“Nobody likes him,” a source told WRAL.
The report also details how Lombardi sent a letter to donors ahead of the Clemson game, positioning North Carolina as a rebuilding program, despite his previous public bravado. It also states that he attempted to rescind NIL money from former Purdue quarterback Ryan Browne after he transferred to the program, only to be asked to leave during spring practice, with the two sides eventually reaching a settlement.
Perhaps Belichick and Lombardi actually are playing the long game, and we’ll look back on North Carolina’s 2025 campaign the same way we view Nick Saban’s 7-6 debut season at Alabama. Sure, you’d expect better Year 1 results in today’s day and age of NIL, but that could also mean that the Tar Heels are only an offseason away.
But if Belichick and Lombardi are going to turn things around, it’s going to be an uphill climb — and not just because the first month of UNC’s season has gone so poorly. It’s not just the losses that are sinking the Tar Heels, but the considerable amount of negative attention they’ve generated. If there’s one thing that Belichick and Lombardi still don’t seem to understand at the college level, it’s that, unlike in the NFL, negative attention matters not just to current players and recruits, but also to donors and administrators who make the whole thing run.
At this point, North Carolina isn’t the NFL’s 33rd team; it’s the ACC’s 14th team, according to its record. And that’s going to be hard to forget the next time Lombardi is sharing one of his cute nicknames with Simmons, which currently seems like it will be much sooner than later.