CHAPEL HILL - For a college football coach, losing sleep is a part of the job description. In North Carolina Coach Mack Brown’s case, his sleepless nights are filled with thoughts regarding special teams.
“Yeah, you always do with punters and kickers,” said Brown. “It always makes you nervous.”
In 2023, UNC ranked 102nd in the country in punt defense, surrendering 11.3 yards per return, and 124th in net punting netting 34.81 yards per attempt. This was good for dead last among then Power Five programs.
Tom Maginness’ lone season as a starter was nearly his only one as the lead punter last, as Brown admitted the Tar Heels aggressively pursued a replacement to help improve their special teams unit. With incoming freshman Lucas Osada entering the fold, they now have a potential replacement should the poor punting persist.
Their subpar special teams play continued on kickoff defense, allowing 25.53 yards per return, which placed the Heels 127th out of 131 FBS programs.
Just two Tar Heels, Sebastian Cheeks and D.J. Jones, both of whom are no longer with the program, earned a PFF grade above 60 on special teams. Excluding placekickers, no player on kickoff coverage recorded a PFF grade above 62.
To make matters worse, they graded out as the 116th-best special teams group, according to PFF, ahead of only Colorado, Cincinnati, Cal, and West Virginia at the Power Five level. Now, with fall camp underway, UNC's coaching staff is emphasizing the importance of special teams play.
“Special teams is one-third of the game. We talk about it all the time, but someone says they don’t want to play on special teams and that’s very selfish because they don’t want to help our team,” said Brown. “That’s a third of how we win, so if you’re not enthusiastic about special teams then you probably need to go do something else.”
It’s one thing to stress the significance of special teams, but it’s another to actively make changes to help improve it.
While UNC is prioritizing playing more bodies and adding depth on defense, it expects it will also allow them to strengthen their special teams play.
“When you have starters that are not as tired at the end of the year, you can have them more involved with special teams. We got to get better on special teams, on defense,” said Brown. “They're simple answers for a very difficult problem, but they're things that we can do.”
Brown believes having a defensive coordinator like Geoff Collins, who is on the same page regarding a bigger rotation, allows the Tar Heels to walk the walk instead of just talking the talk when it comes to creating depth, something they’ve done the previous five seasons.
Even with the glaring issues on special teams, the makings of a productive unit are present in Chapel Hill with the return of Alijah Huzzie and Chris Culliver.
Huzzie ranked 26th in all of college football in punt returns with a PFF grade of 81.2, tallying 112 return yards and one touchdown. He helped UNC lead the ACC with an average of 12.7 yards per return.
As for Culliver, he paced the roster with 105 kickoff return yards in his freshman season with the Tar Heels.
And, at place-kicker North Carolina returns one of the most efficient in the country in the form of Noah Burnette, who converted 19 of his 20 field goal attempts a season ago. Burnette’s consistency helped the Tar Heels sit atop the ACC with a success rate of 91.7%.
With the strategic plans in place to help improve the special teams quality, and the return of their top performers, one-third of UNC’s game is guaranteed to improve heading into Mack Brown’s sixth season.
