Bill Belichick has made another hire for his North Carolina staff. Assuming he stays at North Carolina.
Via 3DownNation.com, CFL coach Chris Jones will join the Tar Heels as a defensive assistant.
Jones, 57, won the Grey Cup in 2015 as the head coach in Edmonton. The next year, he became the coach in Saskatchewan.
After three seasons, Jones made the jump to the NFL, as a defensive assistant on coach Freddie Kitchens’s staff.
He returned to Edmonton as head coach in 2022, after coaching his hometown Tennessee high school in 2021. He was fired five games into the 2024 season. He finished the year as Hamilton’s defensive coordinator.
Kitchens’s presence at UNC surely had something to do with the hiring of Jones. Kitchens was the offensive coordinator under Mack Brown, and Kitchens coached the team’s bowl game. He’s expected to be Belichick’s offensive coordinator.
With Belichick’s 50 years of NFL relationships, it’s odd on the surface that a Kitchens connection would be hired on the defensive side of the ball.
Maybe it means that, if Belichick were to leave for the NFL before he even starts, UNC would move forward with a $10 million buyout in the vault, and Kitchens as the head coach.