CHAPEL HILL – North Carolina Football Coach Mack Brown met with the media Monday afternoon at the Kenan Football Center to offer some thoughts about what has transpired since the bowl game, plus introduce new defensive coordinator Geoff Collins and defensive line coach Ted Monachino. Brown also field questions.
Above is video of Brown’s press conference, and below are some notes from what he had to say:
*Brown addressed responses to his comments about UNC not having won eight and nine games much in the last quarter century.
*Regarding the program moving forward, he said they have to finish stronger. Eight and nine wins are nice given UNC’s history, but that’s not their goal. Decisions in recent weeks have been made to better situation the program to win more moving forward, he said.
*Various forms of the word align was mentioned in the three pressers (Collins and Monachino also met with the media). Brown insisted everyone has to be aligned.
*Brown said “there have been more chanced the last two years” in college football than in the first 40 he was in coaching. “We’re in an NFL model right now without guidelines.” Lots of good and interesting stuff here.
*Regarding NIL, Brown emphatically said, “It’s real, it’s here.” This was when he spoke for a bit about the Hold The Line Campaign by Heels 4 Life that was launched Monday morning. We will have more on this in a separate piece.
*Carolina welcomed 30 new players to the program last week. Of them, 20 are high school class of 2024 signees, one is a junior college transfer, three are preferred walk-ons, and six are from the transfer portal.
Note: UNC gained a commitment from an offensive lineman in the portal a few hours after Brown’s presser, but Zach Greenberg any anyone else who commits from the portal will be June enrollees.
*The offense has been good enough to win a lot of football games, more than UNC has actually won the last five years, but the defense hasn’t been good enough, Brown said.
“We’ve been inconsistent on defense, we just haven’t been consistently good.”
Brown agreed with Gene Chizik to part ways, and he decided to let defensive line coach Tim Cross go as well earlier this month.
“I love Gene Chizik and Tim Cross.”
*In looking for a new coordinator, five people were interviewed, and Brown had some of his assistant coaches take part in the interviews. In the end, they decided on Collins, a former head coach at Temple and Georgia Tech, plus a successful defensive coordinator at multiple stops, including Florida and Mississippi State.
“We interviewed five people, and the one that kept popping up (in staff conversations) to all of us was Geoff Collins.”
The staff held two zooms with Collins for a total of six hours. He had already watched each of UNC’s 13 games, broken down the films, and offered compliments and critiques, while also explaining what he might do differently.
“We wanted somebody that was going to be aggressive, somebody that was going to be simple, somebody that was going to create havoc, somebody that’s going to force tackles for loss, somebody that’s going to get sacks.”
On Collins: “Experienced as a defensive coordinator at a lot of different places, but specifically did a great job at Mississippi State and at Florida. Been a head coach at Temple and Georgia Tech, so he gets it. Tremendous recruiter, very passionate…
“Produced more than three dozen NFL players. Why do you hire him? You look at his record as a defensive coordinator, and is as good as anybody in the country. And he’s doing exactly what we want. He’s fiery, he’s got an aggressive style, and he attacks. And that’s very, very important to us.”
*Monachino spent last year as a defensive analyst with the Tar Heels, now he’s the d-line coach.
“When Coach Chizik brought in Ted Monachino, he couldn’t coach on the field, but we were able to watch him all year and his relationship with the players. So, you’ve got a 33-year veteran, and he’s coached at all levels… (Including 16 years in the NFL)
“Great track record with the defensive line and pass rushers. Terrell Suggs, Khalil Mack, Elvis Dumerville, C.J. Mosley. He coached Ray Lewis, won a Super Bowl, defensive coordinator in the NFL. We’re so lucky to have both of these guys.
“But with Ted, he was familiar with our team, his family is familiar with our team, the players all know him, and they’re very, very excited about him moving forward.”
*Brown mentioned several times attacking with Collins, so how much did he need a change in personality, persona, approach, and culture on defense?
“You don’t want to go back and talk about what wasn’t good, it’s not fair. Those guys aren’t here to defend themselves. But what you want to do is talk about what you’d like to do moving forward. And I’ve coached against Goeff, I know what he does, and I know he makes it very, very difficult for offensive football.
“It was interesting, we had six hours with him on zoom two different times the entire was sitting there, and the first 10 minutes. We had some of the guys here in person, and Goeff was on zoom, and I told the coaches it’s going to be hard for him to live up on zoom, he’s not going to be able to have the video he wants… he can’t get on grease board.
“So, let’s give him a break here, this is going to be tougher. In the first 10 minutes, Goeff had everybody eating out of his hands. And Ted texted me and said, ‘Wow, impressive.’ So, all of the coaches are all in. They came to me and said this guy’s exactly what we need.”
*Brown had Collins speak to the entire team, and then he met only with the defense, “and they were bouncing off the walls coming out.”
*So, Jay Bateman didn’t work out and neither did Gene Chizik, why didn’t they work out, and why will Collins?
“We weren’t very good on defense when we got here. We were really good on offense, and a lot of the offensive players have been drafted. So, we continue to get good defensive players. Jay Bateman just got the defensive coordinator job at Texas A&M So, sometimes it’s just the circumstances.
“And these jobs are hard now. I think there were 37 defensive coordinators fired this year. Hard to play defense. Hard to play defense.
“I’m sitting there interviewing some defensive coordinators that had given up more points than we did, and they’re highly recommended… Defense is hard. All the rules have made it for the offense.”
*With Nick Saban, who is two months younger than Brown, retiring, and Brown speaking as if he has an extensive plan for the future in the program, he was asked straight-up what is his future.
“Jim Harbaugh handles you guys better than anybody when he says, ‘I’m glad I’ve got a future.’ That’s all he said and everybody lets it go. So, I can’t figure it out. But, I’m excited about spring practice, I’m excited about these two guys coming in, the players are all pumped.
“Again, we’re so close. We’re talking about an empty stadium and two wins five years ago. And now, we’re talking about griping at eight and nine (wins), and an Orange Bowl and a Coastal championship. So, we’re close man. We’ve just got to take another step, and it’s my job to figure out what that means.
“And I’ve got to have the fans get totally on board, get aligned, help us with NIL so that doesn’t get us kicked back. Our recruiting hasn’t been as good the last two years since NIL came in. We need to be as good at NIL as anybody in the country. And we’ve got fans that can do that, but we’ve got to be passionate about it.”
