Colt McCoy 'not surprised at all' by Mack Brown's success at North Carolina

North Carolina Tar Heels head coach Mack Brown has been coaching for quite some time. But following his time as the head coach of the Texas Longhorns, many suspected that he would be done with coaching. Instead, after a five-year hiatus, Brown returned to the college football coaching ranks for his second tenure as the Tar Heels head coach.

Brown returning to the sidelines after his stint away from the game surprised many. But it was not surprising to the most decorated college quarterback who played under him, former Longhorns quarterback Colt McCoy. During a recent interview on Green Light with Chris Long, McCoy revealed why he believed his former headman would return to coaching.

“I had a pretty strong inclination that Coach Brown would coach again. I don’t think he loved the way it ended at UT, right,” said McCoy. “After 17 years, all things that he accomplished, the amount of games he won. He turned the program back around. And to kind of end that way, I know that, as a competitor, I felt like the right opportunity, the right situation, he’d get back into it. I’m not surprised at all at the success he’s had at North Carolina.”

Brown did it all at Texas. The former Longhorns head man led them to two national championship appearances, winning the 2005 title game against USC. In his 16 years at Texas, Brown only had one losing season and left as the program’s second all-time winningest head coach, behind only Darrell Royal in wins and win percentage.

His arrival at the program signaled a turnaround for the Longhorns almost instantaneously, as they would finish the season 9-3 and never have a losing record under Brown until the 2010 season. The year before he arrived, in 1998, Texas went 4-7.

As for Browns’ time at North Carolina, McCoy believes his former head coach has turned the program completely around, similar to what he did at Texas. And just as he did with the Longhorns, with the likes of McCoy and Vince Young, Brown has been doing it with some stellar play at quarterback.

“They’ve been competitive and almost winning the ACC every year. He’s got a good quarterback. He had a good quarterback before, Sam Howell, now in Washington. And I think his quarterback now, Drake Maye, is a solid player. I mean, you got a gunslinger, you got a chance, and he’s found him.”

While Brown has turned around the Tar Heels program, making them a competitor year in and year out in the ACC, the team is not yet where he wants it to be. The Tar Heels head coach recently highlighted his desire to take the program from good to great, expanding on their nine-win season from 2022. And if Brown can achieve that, he could win the second national championship of his coaching career. If he pulled that off, one wonder if that would be enough to surprise Colt McCoy.