What Bill Belichick is left with now that circus has left town, air is out of the balloons

As UNC coach Bill Belichick was making the long walk back to the locker room Monday night following his team’s jarring 48-14 loss to TCU, the “other coach,” the Horned Frogs’ Sonny Dykes, was asked to stick around and do the star-turn on-field interview with ESPN’s Holly Rowe. And he promptly threw down the disrespect card, noting all the hoo-ha leading up to this game and how “there was a lot of conversation, and none of it was about us.”

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Dykes knew exactly what he was doing. Had he been running the shop at ESPN, or for that matter any media outlet that has an interest in college football, he’d have done exactly what the whiz kids in Bristol did: Play up the Belichick angle, play it up big time, with plenty of references to Super Bowl championships. And Tom Brady. And how Bill was “returning” to the college game following his childhood stint tagging along with his father during Steve Belichick’s days as an assistant coach and scout at Navy. And did anybody mention that Steve Belichick served as an assistant at UNC for three seasons in the mid-1950s? The legacy continues!

So, yes, absolutely, Dykes understood where the hype machine was going to take this game. Besides, he’s been through this before, given that TCU provided the competition two years ago when Deion Sanders debuted as head coach at Colorado. TCU lost that one. Given another crack at a celebrity first-year coach and all the hype that comes with it, TCU humiliated the Tar Heels to a degree that Kenan Memorial Stadium was emptying in the third quarter. Dykes was thus able to game the system, providing his own players with bulletin board material they’ll carry with them for the rest of their lives.

Things didn’t start out that way. The Tar Heels took a 7-0 lead on the strength of Caleb Hood’s 8-yard touchdown, but what followed for those watching on television was a reminder that Bill Belichick lives in a new world. Instead of the customary cutaway shot to the owner’s suite to reveal Patriots patriarch Robert Kraft celebrating the touchdown, this time it was a cutaway shot of UNC legends Roy Williams and Michael Jordan, followed by a shot of former Pats receiver Randy Moss and … Jordon Hudson! Can’t blame the ESPN truck for that one. Belichick’s much-talked-about girlfriend is part of this.

Later, much later, Hood’s gritty touchdown run now just a distant memory, it was time for Belichick’s postgame presser. The entire affair, about seven minutes, was carried live on SportsCenter. It was an awkward setting, what with Belichick standing in a room festooned with blue-and-white balloons that served only to mock the optimism and advance celebrating that had been swirling about Chapel Hill for weeks on end.

Baby Boomer fans of the Boston Celtics still talk about how the Los Angeles Lakers placed thousands of balloons in the rafters of the Fabulous Forum before Game 7 of the 1969 NBA Finals, the idea being they’d be released after the Lakers took care of business on their home court. Final score: Celtics 108, Lakers 106. “What are they gonna do with all those (expletive) balloons?” hollered Arnold “Red” Auerbach, the late, great coach, general manager and president of the Celtics. Sonny Dykes could have used that line Monday night.

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Under the circumstances, Belichick conducted himself well in his postgame presser, even if much of what he said was boilerplate Bill.

He made the usual references about how “we need to do a better job all the way around, coaching, playing … all three phases of the game.”

He gave credit to the opposing team, another go-to by Belichick during his Patriots years, except when the opposing team was the New York Jets.

He didn’t sound like he was in any great hurry to simply forget about the TCU loss, saying “… we’ll use the time as best we can to correct the mistakes from tonight, and then move on and get ready for Charlotte.”

For anyone who’d like to use that remark about the Tar Heels’ upcoming game against Charlotte as a retooled version of Belichick’s famous rallying cry that “We’re on to Cincinnati,” well, no, sorry, it’s not.

For background, Belichick said, “We’re on to Cincinnati” on Oct. 1, 2014, a couple of days after one of the biggest regular-season losses of the Belichick-Brady era: Kansas City Chiefs 41, Patriots 14. Belichick’s point was that the loss didn’t represent who the Patriots really are, that it was an outlier, that it was going to be left where it belongs. In the past. On to Cincinnati.

The Patriots proceeded to hang a 43-17 beating on the Bengals, thus beginning a stretch in which they won seven straight games. The ’14 Patriots finished the season 12-4 and held off the Seattle Seahawks in Super Bowl XLIX, thanks to Malcolm Butler’s miracle interception at the goal line.

Tar Heels fans can go the on-to-Charlotte route all they want, and, who knows, Belichick may have done so by the time you read this. But anyone who watched the clumsy, chemistry-challenged Tar Heels get stomped by TCU Monday night knows it’ll take more than time-tested Belichickian tweaks to turn things around. As he has pointed out, there’s much work to be done. From a personal perspective, he faces the dual task of building a program, and, in doing so, preventing a painful postscript from being attached to his brilliant NFL coaching career.

For now, the circus has largely left town. And that’s probably a good thing for the 70 newly minted UNC football players who are still getting to know their 73-year-old coach. And he them.

(Photo: Jared C. Tilton / Getty Images)

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