The backdrop for Bill Belichick’s postgame press conference on Monday night featured a tacky blue and white balloon arch better suited for a gender reveal party.
It was a hilariously tone-deaf setting given how disastrously Belichick’s college football coaching debut with North Carolina had gone.
Advertisement
North Carolina’s 48-14 home loss to TCU began encouragingly enough. The Tar Heels carved up the Horned Frogs for 83 yards and a touchdown on their opening possession and forced a 3-and-out on defense.
[Join or create a Yahoo Fantasy Football league for the 2025 NFL season]
To say that it was all TCU from there is the ultimate understatement. North Carolina surrendered 41 straight points and was outgained 542-222. By the start of the fourth quarter, Kenan Stadium was already half-empty and TCU football’s official Twitter account was roasting Belichick and the Tar Heels.
A home drubbing at the hands of an unranked opponent was bad enough for North Carolina. That it was preceded by so much fanfare made it all the more embarrassing. The Tar Heels had sold Belichick’s hire as a reason for renewed optimism. A sellout crowd came to watch the eight-time Super Bowl champion’s college coaching debut. Michael Jordan was in the crowd. So was Lawrence Taylor, Roy Williams and Mia Hamm.
Advertisement
Belichick’s flop raises an obvious question: Where does this rank among embarrassing sports debuts? Yahoo Sports put together a top 10 list of debuts that went horribly wrong.
10. Arch Manning, Texas
The most celebrated quarterback to enter college football in years — and Heisman favorite entering the season — underwhelmed in his debut as Texas’ starting quarterback. For most of a 14-7 loss to Ohio State last Saturday afternoon, Arch Manning appeared spooked by the spotlight, apprehensive in the face of a ferocious pass rush, confused by the way the Buckeyes disguised their coverages and took away the deep ball.
At halftime, Manning was 5-of-10 for 26 yards. He finished 17-for-30 for 170 yards, most of his damage coming in the fourth quarter after Ohio State had opened a two-touchdown lead.
Advertisement
“Ultimately, not good enough,” Manning said afterward, and he’s right.
Is it recency bias to put Manning on this list? Probably. But did he mostly stink on Saturday? There’s no denying it.
9. Jimmy Johnson, Dallas Cowboys
The inaugural game of Jimmy Johnson’s tenure as Dallas Cowboys head coach is a reminder not to make snap judgments too quickly. America’s team did not score a single point in
Dallas had possession of the ball for just six-plus minutes in the first half and 15-plus minutes for the entire game. Rookie quarterback Troy Aikman finished 17 of 35 for 180 yards and two interceptions. Star tailback Herschel Walker gained a scant 10 yards on eight carries, grousing afterward that Johnson had abandoned the run game too quickly.
Advertisement
The one-sided loss was a harbinger of things to come during a 1-15 season in 1989, but Johnson famously engineered a remarkable turnaround. Behind Aikman, Emmitt Smith and Michael Irvin, the Cowboys won a pair of Super Bowls under Johnson and one more after Barry Switzer took over for him.
8. Anthony Bennett, Cleveland Cavaliers
The surprise No. 1 overall pick in the historically weak 2013 NBA Draft struggled from the start to validate the Cleveland front office’s confidence in him. Anthony Bennett showed up to his first training camp overweight, fell behind in his preparation for his rookie season and never really managed to catch up.
Bennett went 0-for-5 in his scoreless debut against Brooklyn and missed the first sixteen shots that he attempted as a rookie. He didn’t score his first basket until Cleveland’s fifth game and drew boos from the home fans within his first month with the Cavaliers. Not only did he not start any games for the Cavaliers that season, he never even got off the bench in nearly half of them.
Advertisement
Things did not get much better for Bennett over the course of three-plus NBA seasons. Since 2017, he has bounced between the G-League and a plethora of overseas leagues.
7. Tim Tebow, New York Mets
It was the equivalent of a quarterback lining up to take the snap behind his right guard instead of his center. In 2017, before the first at-bat of his spring training debut with the New York Mets, Tim Tebow wandered behind home plate and
When asked to explain what he was doing, Tebow insisted to reporters, “I thought you walked around because you’re a left-hander. I found out you don’t do that.” Others speculated that Tebow wasn’t quite so naive as he claimed and
Advertisement
Whatever the reason, the rest of Tebow’s first game against major leaguers did not go much better. The former NFL quarterback struck out looking twice and grounded into a double play with the bases loaded. He did reach when he was hit by a pitch, but his stay on base ended with him getting doubled off first on a line drive.
6. Kenny Payne, Louisville
When Louisville introduced Kenny Payne as its new coach three years ago, he seemed like a reasonable choice to heal a proud program. Payne was one of Louisville’s own, a 1,000-point scorer who helped the Cardinals capture the national title in 1986. He later built a reputation as one of college basketball’s elite assistant coaches at Oregon and Kentucky, excelling in recruiting and in player development.
Alas, college basketball history is littered with well-respected assistants who weren’t cut out to be program CEOs, and right away questions arose about whether Payne could successfully make that transition. He failed to restock the roster with transfers or late signees and then struggled to get the most out of the modest talent he did have.
Advertisement
Cold-shooting, turnover-plagued Louisville lost its exhibition opener by 10 against Division II Lenoir-Rhyne. Then the Cardinals dropped their opening three regular season games against the likes of Bellarmine, Wright State and Appalachian State. Louisville fired Payne after he finished his second season with a 12-52 overall record.
5. Jonathan Woodgate, Real Madrid
Fourteen months after Real Madrid signed him to a lucrative £13.4m deal during summer 2004, English defender Jonathan Woodgate finally recovered from a torn thigh muscle and returned to competitive soccer. To say the least, his long-anticipated Real Madrid debut
Woodgate’s misfortunes began in the 25th minute when he threw himself at a cross from Athletic Bilbao’s Joseba Etxeberria in an ill-fated attempt to clear the ball. The result was , a diving header that not even legendary Real Madrid goalkeeper Iker Casillas had any chance to save.
Advertisement
It only got worse from there for Woodgate as he was sent off in the 66th minute after a needless challenge resulted in his second yellow card. Injury setbacks limited Woodgate to nine league games for Real Madrid that season. In 2007, MARCA readers as the worst signing of the 21st century by a Spanish club.
4. Bill Belichick, North Carolina
The most concerning aspect of North Carolina’s blowout loss to TCU is that there’s no reason to believe it was a fluke. Belichick inherited a roster that lacked the talent to achieve his goal of competing for national titles and then didn’t do enough on the recruiting trail to change that.
Belichick offered a blunt assessment of his shellshocked team after its season-opening loss.
Advertisement
Said the notoriously terse coach, “Obviously we have a lot of work to do.”
3. Brandon Weeden, Cleveland Browns
Brandon Weeden was warming up for his NFL debut on September 9, 2012, just as a host of uniformed soldiers began unfurling a massive American flag in preparation for the singing of the national anthem. Caught unaware, Weeden avoided being trampled by ducking underneath the billowing stars and stripes. Then the 29-year-old rookie quarterback struggled underneath the flag for an agonizingly long time before finally popping out the other side.
“I expected they’d give me a little warning,” Weeden sheepishly told the Dayton Daily News after the Browns lost 17-16 to the Eagles.
The flag incident foreshadowed Weeden’s lack of situational awareness in the pocket. He threw four interceptions that day against the Eagles, the last one snuffing out his team’s last-gasp bid to set up a game-winning field goal. Weeden remained Cleveland’s starting quarterback for a season and a half before spending time as a backup for the Cowboys and Texans.
Advertisement
2. Nathaniel Hackett, Denver Broncos
Nathaniel Hackett went against the percentages with just over one minute to go in his NFL head coaching debut and Denver facing 4th-and-5 from the Seattle 46-yard line.
Instead of trusting the quarterback that cost them three players, five draft picks and $165 million in guaranteed salary that offseason, Hackett sent Russell Wilson to the sideline. He let the clock run down to 20 seconds without calling timeout and instead called on kicker Brandon McManus to attempt a 64-yard field goal, which at the time would have equaled the second longest in NFL history.
McManus’ field goal sailed wide left. The Broncos lost 17-16.
Advertisement
Between that oft-questioned decision, a slew of delay-of-game penalties and a lack of ingenuity on fourth-and-short, Hackett lost the trust of the Broncos fan base that day. Denver hired a clock-management specialist to assist Hackett a week later. Hackett was fired with two games left in his lone season as Broncos head coach.
1. Nathan Peterman, Buffalo Bills
The most common explanation for the Bills’ decision to bench Tyrod Taylor in November 2017 was that they needed to see what they had in rookie quarterback Nathan Peterman.
Well, they saw alright. And what they saw wasn’t pretty.
The fifth-round draft pick from Pittsburgh opened the game against the Los Angeles Chargers with a pick six returned by Korey Toomer for a touchdown. Then he threw another interception. And another. And another. And another.
Advertisement
Peterman became the first quarterback since the 1970 AFL-NFL merger to throw at least five interceptions in the first half of a game. The Bills mercifully pulled him at halftime and reinserted Taylor as the team’s starting quarterback.
Against all odds, Peterman stuck around in the NFL for six seasons as a backup. He has a career completion percentage of 53.1 and has thrown for four touchdowns and 13 interceptions.
Read the full article here