Gio Lopez paints bleak picture of time at North Carolina under Bill Belichick

Gio Lopez doesn’t have to worry about playing for Bill Belichick or suiting up in Tar Heel blue this season. If that sounds harsh, well, Lopez didn’t look back too fondly at his time at North Carolina in 2025, playing for legendary head coach.

Belichick spent his first season in college football last fall but mustered just a 4-8 record. In what GM Michael Lombardi described as the 33rd NFL team, it was anything but as the Tar Heels struggled from the get-go.

Lopez is now at Wake Forest after transferring in January. Unless the Demon Deacons play UNC for the ACC crown, Lopez won’t be seeing Belichick anytime soon. Safe to say, he loves where he is now.

“Back at the other school, it felt like there’s no air,” Lopez said, via Logan Lazarczyk of SI. “Here, it’s fun again. They’re moving us in the right direction, energized, and guys are enjoying football. It’s like fresh air. I’d never had to respond to tough situations like that on that loud of a scale.”

Rather than having the balance of fun and work, like how he felt, it was all work and no play. Just like that line from “The Shining.”

“It was more like work,” Lopez said. “After that first game, it felt like getting through the day. You don’t want to live like that, where you’re up at night thinking about the next day.”

Bill Belichick ripped by ex-QB Gio Lopez, now at Wake Forest

North Carolina lost its season opener 48-14 to TCU at home, but won their next two games over Charlotte and Richmond. But then, the Tar Heels lost four in a row before actually beating Syracuse and Stanford to stay out of the ACC basement.

Lopez struggled. He went 4-of-10 for 69 yards and an interception in the season opener. Over the course of his 12 games last fall, Lopez finished with just 1,747 yards, 10 touchdowns, five interceptions and a 65.1% completion percentage.

Lopez wasn’t the only one to criticize the Belichick regime. His father Barney Lopez gave a very honest take, at least from his perspective.

“You were ridiculed if you didn’t do it exactly the way he was told,” Barney Lopez said. “You could be at the dang line, see the play is about to be blown up, but if you try to call it off or audible, you were ridiculed.”

Belichick was likely not the sole blame for Gio Lopez’s transfer. But there’s no doubt the program just could not hit the right buttons last year.

“Gio has always loved the game of football, and he was losing the love for it when he was over there [at North Carolina],” Barney Lopez said. Gio Lopez now has a chance to lead Jake Dickert’s Wake Forest program after going through what could be described as a factory reset.