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CHAPEL HILL – College football is a results-oriented business.

It can be cutthroat, it can be daunting, and it can be draining. And it’s most certainly highly demanding.

So, when North Carolina Coach Mack Brown recently half-joked about riding Gene Chizik hard over the Tar Heels’ struggles on that side of the ball last season, he basically meant it. But his approach wasn’t unreasonably demeaning, it was essentially twofold, to paraphrase: I love you, you’re my guy, but damnit, get the job done now!

Or something like that.

Setting the scene: Chizik had previously last coached serving as Larry Fedora’s defensive coordinator in 2016, also at UNC, and then he spent five years in TV. In Chizik's return to coaching, his unit finished ranked among the bottom in the nation in most categories last year, low-lighted by allowing Appalachian State 40 points in the fourth quarter of a 63-61 victory in Boone last September.

“Gene was behind (last year) and didn’t even realize it when he got here because he’d been out five years,” Brown recently said, before noting that’s all behind Chizik and the program.

“So, he’s caught up and he’s ready to go. He has a huge chip on his shoulder. He’s tired of hearing how bad we are, and I like that. I throw it out there every now and then just to make him more mad.”

A jab from his boss? Stats don’t lie. Chizik knows what the defense did last year, yet digs from Brown?

“He does that every day with everybody,” Chizik said, smiling. “Nah, we have great discussions, we have a lot of fun with it. We still see (that) we have to be better on defense, we have to play better on defense, we will play better on defense.

“I got out of TV to come here and help Mack win a championship. That’s why I’m here. Of course, I love being around the players, I love the kids. But I came here to do a job for Mack Brown whether he’s joking or not joking. It’s pretty clear we need to play better.”

In Chizik’s first stint at UNC, he turned a wretched defense into a more-than-acceptable one. The Heels went from six wins in 2014 to 11 in 2015, the first of Chizik’s two years running Fedora’s defense.

The missed tackle rate was cut nearly in half, but it improved only a smidgen a year ago from 2021 under Jay Bateman. So, Chizik recognized early on the game had changed enough he needed to tweak, so he did. The defense improved late in the season, but still wasn’t exactly stout.

And regardless, the beating UNC has taken from the media and fans for being so porous on that side of the ball has been a daily drumbeat, and it’s somewhat justified. That is why the directive to change things, in addition to becoming more “violent” and less “soft” are messages emanating from the program over the last seven months.

Carolina’s defense has a collective chip on its shoulder because Chizik does.

“I always have a chip on my shoulder,” he said. “I’ve always coached that way, I’ve always coached that way. But obviously, any competitor right now, when you’re not happy with a result, you have an edge.

“We all have an edge; the players should have an edge, all the coaches should have an edge, Mack should have an edge, I should have an edge. We all should because we’re all responsible for production results.”

And this is coming from someone who won a national championship at Auburn as a head coach in 2010 and has a massive banner erected outside of Jordan Hare Stadium in his honor. He also won a national championship as Brown’s defensive coordinator at Texas in 2005.

Brown doesn’t need to speak for Chizik, outlining whatever kind of chip or motivation hanging over that fuels him every day. Chizik can do that on his own.

“It's a big man’s game,” he said. “And when you play bad and you stink, it is what it is, you’ve got to fix it. There’s times last year when we played bad and we stunk, and there was times last year when we played good. We just didn’t do it consistently.”

The mission is to correct that this fall, well, it has been since last January. Jab from Brown or not, the inner burn is there for Chizik to make things right on his side of the ball.