{"id":344901,"date":"2025-12-12T18:43:07","date_gmt":"2025-12-12T18:43:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/344901\/"},"modified":"2025-12-12T18:43:07","modified_gmt":"2025-12-12T18:43:07","slug":"bill-belichick-fires-freddie-kitchens-mike-priefer","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/344901\/","title":{"rendered":"Bill Belichick fires Freddie Kitchens, Mike Priefer"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Bill Belichick has survived a full season in Chapel Hill. Two of his key assistants have not.<\/p>\n<p>Via Pete Thamel of ESPN.com, Belichick <a class=\"Link\" href=\"https:\/\/x.com\/PeteThamel\/status\/1999471557245304972?s=20\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener nofollow\">has fired<\/a> offensive coordinator Freddie Kitchens and special-teams coordinator Mike Priefer.<\/p>\n<p>Kitchens, the head coach of the Browns in 2019 and the interim Tar Heels coach in 2024, stayed on after Belichick was hired last year. Belichick brought Priefer to UNC after two decades in the NFL, and two years out of football.<\/p>\n<p>Priefer was a member of Kitchens\u2019s staff in Cleveland.<\/p>\n<p>Belichick will now be hiring two new coordinators as he prepares for his second second at UNC. If it doesn\u2019t go much better than his first season, there may not be a third.<\/p>\n<p>And coaching only goes so far. At the college level, it\u2019s about the quality of the players. For 2025, the Tar Heels didn\u2019t have enough good players. They\u2019ll need better players if they want to have a better outcome in 2026.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Bill Belichick has survived a full season in Chapel Hill. Two of his key assistants have not. Via&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":344902,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[63],"tags":[349,99],"class_list":{"0":"post-344901","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-nfl","8":"tag-nfl","9":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/344901","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=344901"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/344901\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/344902"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=344901"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=344901"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=344901"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}