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Guest College Football Column

Posted on August 31, 2026 by guestcollaborator72 Leave a comment

By Vinny Jace, Special to the15net dot com:

Little was expected from North Carolina as they entered Ireland to play the TCU Horned Frogs in the season opener—the same team that thrashed them 48-14 and set the Tar Heels on a path of endless ridicule. Revenge never tasted so sweet, as Bill Belichick and his boys white-knuckled a 15-10 win. What makes this moment sweeter for a Belichick fan such as myself is the sense of how hard the team worked the entire offseason just to put their best foot forward. The roster turnover was jaw-dropping in its magnitude, akin to selectively thinning a forest to burn away the smaller, weaker underbrush and dead wood.

UNC introduced 59 new players to the squad this offseason, including 19 transfers and 40 first-year players. Meanwhile, 31 players departed through the transfer portal alongside standard graduations. Most of the team is made up of underclassmen, which hopefully signals the job security Belichick has for this season and the next as he develops them into effective juniors and seniors.

If you can’t stand the heat, get rid of the Kitchens.

On top of that, Belichick brought in Bobby Petrino to replace Freddie Kitchens. It’s too early to say whether UNC will improve from their dastardly, last-place mark in the ACC offensively from the year before. But his coaching, fused with the new crop of players led by 23-year-old journeyman Billy Edwards Jr., breathed fresh air into the system. The stat sheet was not lit up with gaudy numbers. But playing nearly error-free football on a sloppy field, combined with a modest 16-of-28 passing performance and 232 yards, is a hell of an improvement. Petrino was brought in to implement a balanced, pro-style offense mirroring the system Belichick ran in New England. So far the marriage has worked out well—and dare I say, it breeds confidence going forward.

But as Belichick says, coaches lose games; players win them. You’d be hard-pressed to find positive performances from UNC last season, especially on offense. The defensive side yielded hard-nosed, gritty efforts that typically went unnoticed. The only player on offense I can think of who left a mark on me from last year was running back Demon June (today he ran for 25 yards on 6 rushes), who now shares backfield duties with Benjamin Hall (11 carries, 36 yards) and Jaylen McGill (5 rushes for 33 yards and UNC’s lone touchdown).

But let us start by exalting the defense. Xavier Lewis served as UNC’s wrecking ball on the interior, dismantling TCU’s blocking and racking up 2 sacks and 4.5 tackles for loss on his own. Coincidentally, Lewis was one of Bill’s first recruits.
Linebacker Derek McDonald led the entire team in total production. He clogged the running lanes all afternoon, securing a team-high 9 tackles. Defensive lineman Jaylen Harvey provided excellent edge containment and registered 5 combined tackles.

TCU did not score a single point in the second half. While everyone rushes to blame Sonny Dykes and try to place him on the hot seat, we should keep in mind this is a TCU team that won 9 games the last two seasons. They are a good program, and beating them is no small feat. Offensively, just by staring at the team stats you get a sense of how quietly UNC dominated TCU: 322 total yards to their opponents’ 281; 5.6 yards per play to their even 4. UNC committed just 3 penalties to TCU’s 11.

The team might have a legitimate weapon at tight end in Jelani Thurmond, who caught 4 passes for 94 yards, including an explosive 35-yard catch to ignite the Tar Heels’ opening scoring drive. Jordan Shipp went into the game expected to be Edwards’ most sure-handed receiver and lived up to the expectations, snagging 5 catches for 71 yards.

Overall, a solid opening for UNC hoping to wash away the bitter taste of last season 4-8 record. There’s a lot of work to be done; bumps in the road are surely to be expected. Progress is typically nonlinear. But as of now, the sky appears less filled with doom and gloom.

Vinny Jace is a special contributor to The15net.com.

Guest Patriots Column – Regarding Hunter Henry

Posted on August 13, 2026 by guestcollaborator72 Leave a comment

Doesn’t he just look right in the old Pat Patriot uniform, Craig?

By Vinny Jace, Special to the15net dot com:

New England has a history of dynamic tight ends who, in the barest sense, acted as security blankets for their quarterbacks. Of course, that is a criminally minimalist way to explain the contributions of Rob Gronkowski, Ben Coates, and Russ Francis. They could block, catch, run, and open up the game. They’re either enshrined in Canton, waiting for their gold jacket, or at worst qualified to be inducted into the Hall of Very Good (Coates).

Hunter Henry, now entering his age-32 season with the Patriots, likely won’t receive a gold jacket or be widely remembered. The fandom of this current Patriots team is centered on Drake Maye—and understandably so. Eventually someone who catches his spirals will become a Twitter darling to the hyper-online community. But that won’t be Henry. Something about how he plays, looks, and conducts himself doesn’t register. Yet on the field he’s been the team’s most dependable player in an era plagued by instability.

Since Bill Belichick signed Henry in the rare Robert Kraft green-lit splurge of 2021, his quarterbacks have been plentiful and mostly bad: Mac Jones, Bailey Zappe, Jacoby Brissett, and then finally Maye. Despite that, his raw numbers never dipped, and he has compiled an impressive résumé over his five seasons in Foxborough.

In five years, Henry ranks among franchise tight ends third in receptions (259), fourth in yards (2,973), fourth in touchdowns (26), first in catch percentage (68.3%), and fourth in total games (81).

While Gronkowski excelled in the vertical game, Coates specialized in brute force across the middle, and Francis was a trailblazer in utilizing raw, imposing speed, Henry has exercised spatial awareness and acts as a high-IQ chain mover.
He cannot duplicate the blocking ability of Gronkowski, though he does excel as a positional blocker, accumulating an above-average block win rate of 75.8%. Everything Henry does is in the shadows and easily forgotten.

On third downs he is primarily the safety blanket his quarterback will look to if things break down. Over his career, an elite 84.4% of his third-down receptions have resulted in a first down. In third-and-medium settings, Henry can use his football IQ to find and exploit soft spots in zone coverage.

He can use his body to shield off trailing defenders, giving Maye an open, low-risk window to throw into. Even when defenders lock down in man coverage on third down, Henry’s strong hands stand out. He ranked fourth among all tight ends with 13 contested catches last season.

In the red zone, Henry can find his way through traffic, boasting an impressive 63% catch rate inside the 20-yard line. Twenty-four of his touchdowns in a Patriots uniform have come from inside the red zone. What he does is actually similar to what A.J. Brown does, only from the inside rather than the outside.

Just recently he signed a two-year extension and will be expected to shoulder the brunt of the load at his position, as he has throughout his entire tenure. Co-stars at the position have come and gone: Jonnu Smith, Mike Gesicki, Austin Hooper, and now rookie Eli Raridon is expected to suit up next to him as the second tight end.

Henry represents dependability and leadership both on and off the field even as the team around him burned.

It’s all about Drake Maye in Foxborough. As it should be. And Brown eats up what little oxygen is left. Henry exists on the fringes, but when you look at what he’s meant to this franchise that’s been in flux, you can’t put a price on that level of peace of mind.