After one season at the University of North Carolina under head coach Bill Belichick, former Minnesota Vikings special teams coordinator Mike Priefer was relieved of his role at the school on Friday.
Priefer spent the 2025 season as North Carolina's special teams coordinator, and his performance clearly wasn't good enough for Belichick to keep him on his staff for the 2026 campaign.
According to Inside Carolina's Jeremiah Holloway, the Tar Heels ranked "12th in the ACC as a punt return team, 14th as a kick return team and 11th in punting," in addition to ranking "11th in the opponent kickoff return game and 10th in opponent punt return" with Priefer leading the unit.
Along with parting with the former Vikings coach on Friday, Belichick also fired Freddie Kitchens, who served as North Carolina's offensive coordinator during the 2025 season.
North Carolina fires former Minnesota Vikings coach Mike Priefer
At 59-years-old, it's possible that Priefer's time as a special teams coordinator in the NFL or at the college level could be over.
Before joining Belichick in North Carolina earlier this year, his most recent coaching gig was when he ran the special teams for the Cleveland Browns from 2019 to 2022.
Priefer got his first coaching job in the NFL all the way back in 2002 when he was the assistant special teams coordinator for the Jacksonville Jaguars. After that, he bounced around the league, serving various roles with the Kansas City Chiefs, New York Giants, and Denver Broncos, before joining the Vikings in 2011.
Priefer wound up spending a total of eight seasons in Minnesota, and under his watch, the team developed some of the most impressive returners in franchise history in Cordarrelle Patterson and Marcus Sherels.
Unfortunately, the most notable part of Priefer's tenure with the Vikings had nothing to do with anything he did on the sidelines during a game. Instead, many will always remember him as the guy who was suspended for three games by Minnesota in 2014 after an internal investigation revealed he made a homophobic remark in front of two former Vikings players.
After his suspension, Priefer remained with the Vikings until after the conclusion of the 2018 season, when he left to join fellow former Minnesota assistant coach Kevin Stefanski in Cleveland after Stefanski was hired to be the Browns' new head coach.