Geoff Collins details the challenges of getting fired at Georgia Tech, demoted to coordinator

It was certainly never the plan to get fired from his job as the head coach at Georgia Tech. But Geoff Collins, North Carolina’s current defensive coordinator, wasn’t going to let even that moment go to waste.

In a year off from coaching before joining the North Carolina staff, Collins said he had plenty of time to reflect and learn from how he ran his program. It’s time now that he’s thankful for, having helped him evolve and grow as a football coach after really only seeing success through much of his early career.

“That’s always a thing,” Collins said. “Because in my entire career, it has been consistent success, success, success, success. And then you go through that and you become very reflective, self-reflective. What a lot of people can do, is they can just point fingers and blame and just deflect everything instead of going inside and going through the process, what you could’ve done different, what you could’ve done better. Obviously, everybody knows the circumstances that happen. But that doesn’t matter. What could I have done better for the next time?”

Collins continued, explaining the personal benefit of taking a year off from coaching.

“Here’s the benefit, for me: I got to take the year to regroup, be very reflective and then I get to come work for a Hall of Famer and watch how he does it on a daily basis and it has been wonderful for my career, wonderful for my soul and just getting to come out here every day and pour into these young men and a culture and a program that is set up for success,” Collins said.

And working for Mack Brown, the Tar Heels current head coach, is something that Collins also hasn’t taken for granted.

From winning national championships to building up the Tar Heels, Collins knows there’s endless things he can learn from Brown.

“And I get to watch him navigate this new landscape of college football that we’re all in and he does it with such grace, he does it with such poise,” Collins said. “He genuinely cares about every single one of these players. Genuinely cares about every coach and every staff member and their family. And that’s valuable, that means a lot to me. That’s something I always tried to do. And to see somebody that has reached the pinnacle of the sport and is still doing it at a high level with class and grace and dignity and energy and fire is so much fun every single day to learn from.”