CHAPEL HILL – Mack Brown spent the first 30 years as a head college football coach using his own genius, instinct, and bravado when it came to making potentially game-altering decisions for his team.

He was so effective at this it earned him a spot in the College Football Hall of Fame.

But when Brown came out of retirement in late 2018 to take over at North Carolina, a place he left 21 years earlier, he found a new way to navigate the sometimes-treacherous landscape of the gridiron.

Analytics.

As in the services of Championship Analytics, Inc, also known as CAI.

Should a team go for it on fourth-and-three at the opponents’ 40-yard-line? Check the analytics, it will say yay or nay on that.

In the Tar Heels’ 34-24 loss at home to Pittsburgh last Saturday, CAI told Brown and his staff to go for it on seven fourth downs. Brown agreed six times, but the Heels converted just twice, which included failures inside the Panthers’ 10-yard-line, thus costing the Heels points.

“I am an aggressive go-for-it confident, it gives your team confidence when you go for it,” said Brown, who was an offensive coordinator for legendary Oklahoma Coach Barry Switzer in the 1980s. “But you’ve got to make them. And you sit there two out of six, and we just sat there and went over all six of those.”

UNC has one of the top kickers in the nation in Noah Burnette. The chances are quite high he would have made those kicks, and then again on fourth-and-2 at the Pitt 31 with 1:17 remaining and the Heels trailing by 10.

Burnette is 11-for-12 on field goal attempts between 40 and 49 yards out over the last two seasons, so what would have been a 48-yarder was certainly manageable. Get that, trail by seven, and go for the onside kick. Two scores were needed anyway.

But the staff went with the analytics.

“I told the coaches, it’s one thing to go for them, but you’ve got to make them,” Brown said. “Now, if we kicked three field goals, we’d still gotten beat. But we would have had a better chance, but we knew we had to score touchdowns going into this game because they were a team that was scoring a lot of points.”

What’s interesting is that UNC was 2-for-6 on fourth downs against Pitt but entered the game 2-for-5 through the first five contests. So, either analytics has a keen understanding of a team’s personnel, or the UNC staff simply overrode the suggestions. Because that’s all CAI does is offer suggestions.

According to its official website, championshipanalytics.com, its mission is to fulfill a “goal of integrating world-class analytics with a coach’s insight to take the guesswork out of in-game decision making.”

CAI supplies reports for more than 100 football teams from the NFL to schools in each of the Power 4 conferences as well as other FBS and FCS conferences. Each client is provided a book for every game, and it changes based on the opponent. North Carolina is one of its clients.

So was Troy when current UNC Offensive Coordinator Chip Lindsey was its head coach.

“We signed up for that service while I was the head coach there,” said Lindsey, who led the Sun Belt Conference program from 2019-21. “I can’t sit here and tell you I did exactly what they said every time. I think there’s human element to it. But it’s something that if you really research it and study it, it does make sense. And you see guys across the country using it.”

Founded in 2011, CAI provides its clients each week with a three-ring binder filled with color-coded charts and compete breakdowns of that teams’ matchup for that particular game. It measures the strengths and weaknesses of both teams putting them into just about every scenario that might be encountered in the game while providing strategic recommendations that enhance their chances at winning.

Rob Ash won 247 games as a college head coach, including at Drake and Montana State, and was most recently an offensive analyst at Arkansas in 2016. It was at Montana State when Ash started using CAI, but now he’s been the director of coaching development at CAI for the last eight years. He’s become one of the go-to guys at CAI and is well known and respected in the coaching community.

Basically, the information staffs get are projections based on what will happen if decision A is made or decision B. This helps coaches understand once they’re on certain parts of the field where they will go for it on fourth down unless the analytics suggest that’s not a wise move.

So, instead of trying to get 10 yards on three plays, staffs can run plays that at the very least get them seven yards on three plays. They’ve already determined they will go for it on fourth-and-three if that’s what they end up facing.

Percentages change each week because opponents also change. What made sense against NC State might not make as much sense against Virginia.

It helps to understand there’s nothing knee-jerk about using analytics. Brown says the staff makes most determinations by Thursday how they will handle most situations. Then in the game, the communication about possibly going for it on fourth down is discussed and nailed down during earlier downs.

“Coach will tell you on third down, ‘Hey, this is four-down territory,’ on three or less or four or less, whatever based on the analytics,” Lindsey explained. “You’ve got an idea before the third down usually what it’s going to be.

“And then it goes back to what was our third-down call, what fits first, what they show, and then, ‘hey, I can run it here because I know we’re going for it on fourth down anyway.”’

Analytics aren’t exactly the lifeblood of a coach’s existence, especially someone like Brown, who won championships of all kinds before CAI was a thing.

But it’s here and is a major part of Carolina’s gameplans before each game.