Mack Brown addresses emotions of Geoff Collins facing Georgia Tech

The North Carolina Tar Heels are getting ready to take on the Georgia Tech Yellow Jackets. With that, head coach Mack Brown knows his defensive coordinator Geoff Collins is going to be in an emotional position.

Ahead of that game, Brown addressed the emotions of the game for Collins and how he’s handling them as they prepare to play Georgia Tech. He also referenced his own time playing against his former teams. This comes around two years since he was fired as the head coach of the Yellow Jackets.

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“I can say I really didn’t [take games like this personally],” Mack Brown said. “I love North Carolina. Nobody really understood the circumstances of me leaving and it didn’t matter. Nobody was gonna listen anyway. So, when we had the game in Austin, we had just lost a player. Really and truly, it was all about him and his family. We lost him to a car wreck in the spring. It was our first home game. It was Cole Pittman. I remember it like it was today. So, I’m sitting there with that family who’s lost their child and trying to honor him on a game where everybody thought I’d be fighting North Carolina. I really wasn’t.”

Mack Brown is referencing leaving North Carolina for Texas in 1998. Then, in 2001 and 2002, the teams played a home and home series. There was some tension in those games, especially when Brown made sure to score exactly 44 points in honor of Cole Pittman, but as Brown explained, his personal history wasn’t his focus.

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“When we came back here, it was interesting,” Brown said. “It was a drizzly day and Mac McWhorter was our offensive line coach. He and I look a lot alike and he walked out on the field before I did and he got booed. He came back in and said, ‘Man, are they mad at you.’ And I said, ‘That’s why I sent you out first. I wanted you to be the test dummy.’ Then, I remember after we won the game, I came back in and people said, ‘How’d it feel to get booed at Chapel Hill?’ And I said, ‘I got booed here for 10 years. So, I’m used to that.’ But I never, ever took it personal. I didn’t. You coach your team. You do the best job you can do.”

Geoff Collins is a Georgia native who spent multiple stints as an assistant at Georgia Tech before becoming the team’s head coach in 2019. However, it was a difficult tenure for Collins, who was only able to go 10-28 there, getting fired after four games in 2022. He took that job after being the head coach at Temple, a team he, incidentally, coached against his first season at Georgia Tech, losing 24-2.

“So, I talked to Geoff this morning a little bit. He took the Georgia Tech team back to Temple right after he left Temple,” Brown said. “And his team at Temple was a lot better than his Georgia Tech team. So, I didn’t ask him the score but it didn’t sound good. So, he’s done this before and he recruited a bunch of these kids. So, it’s emotional but you can’t take it personal. That’s not what you do. Most of the world doesn’t care. Only the Texas and Carolina fans cared when I came back here. Nobody else cared. And after it’s over, nobody remembers it or cares. So, it would be very, very selfish for you to think it’s about you when it’s about the kids and the universities.”

It had been a difficult undertaking for Collins, looking to transition the program from the Paul Johnson era. However, after maxing out at three wins in a season, it was time for a change in Atlanta.

After taking 2023 away from coaching, Geoff Collins returned for the 2024 season as the defensive coordinator for Mack Brown and North Carolina. To this point, it’s been a mixed bag with the Tar Heels ranked 96th in scoring defense, giving up 28.7 points per game. They’re also 93rd in total defense, giving up 382.3 yards per game.

Much of that is skewed by the James Madison game when North Carolina gave up 70 points and 611 yards total. Take out that game and the defense is giving up just 20.4 points per game. Of course, that game did happen and now Geoff Collins is going to be focused on not letting it happen again.