Mack Brown explains hiring process of Freddie Kitchens

North Carolina head coach Mack Brown made several changes to his offensive staff this offseason following Phil Longo taking the offensive coordinator job at Wisconsin. That included adding Freddie Kitchens as the team’s tight ends coach and run game coordinator.

Now, as spring practice is about to begin, Brown explained the process for hiring Kitchens after John Lilly left for the NFL.

“We started a search immediately to try and find the right guy to take his place and we found Freddie Kitchens,” Mack Brown said.

“I started looking at Freddie and looking at his profile. He called me and said he was really interested in this job. We got on the Zoom with him Friday morning with the whole offensive staff. They were all blown away by him.”

Mack Brown immediately praised his experience, both as a player and as a coach at the NFL level.

Freddie Kitchens is best known for his one season as the Cleveland Browns head coach. That season, the Browns went 6-10. He has also spent time as an assistant at the NFL and college level, most recently as an analyst for South Carolina.

“His experience is unbelievable. He actually played against us in the Gator Bowl in 93. He was a freshman with Coach [Gene] Stallings when we played Alabama in Jacksonville. But, you start looking at this. He’s had 16 years of NFL experience. He coached tight ends for Coach [Bill] Parcells with the Cowboys. He was tight end coach, quarterback coach, and running back coach for 11 years at the Cardinals. He was the assistant head coach, the offensive coordinator, the running backs coach, and the head coach with the Cleveland Browns. And he coached tight end with the New York Giants.”

Mack Brown went on to praise Freddie Kitchens for the players who he has coached throughout his career, including players like Jason Witten and Baker Mayfield.

“So, he coached Baker Mayfield who was a first round draft choice and runner-up for Rookie of the Year when he was at Cleveland. He’s coached in a Super Bowl when he was with the Cardinals. He’s actually coached Carson Palmer and Baker Mayfield, two first-round draft choice quarterbacks. He’s coached Jason Witten and Evan Engram, two great tight ends, and he also coached Nick Chubb, Kareem Hunt, and Adrian Peterson as his running backs,” Brown said.

“So, he brings a wealth of experience to us at the highest level. He’s been fun, you guys will get to talk to him here in a minute, and I’m really, really excited about him joining our staff, and he’ll have eyes to help Chip [Lindsey] on the quarterbacks. Because he’s coached some of the best quarterbacks in the country. He will give us great insight into red zone and third downs and a lot of different things that he’s done.”

Mack Brown on what the transfer class will do for UNC

Mack Brown thinks that his North Carolina Tar Heels are close to getting over the hump and he thinks that the transfer portal could help them get there.

“I’d like to think that our four years, the nucleus we have on our team, the fact that we’ve got one of the best quarterbacks in the country coming back, and the addition of not only the 10 high school guys, because some of them will play because they’re more like sophomores when they go through spring practice, and then the addition of the nine will take us another step,” Brown said.

“And that’s what we talked about yesterday, not everybody played great, and I’ll go over that in a second, in the Oregon game. And we lost with 19 seconds left to a really good team by one point, that’s how close we are. So come on guys, we all need to do something better than we’ve got right now to get where we want to go. So whatever you’ve done, take it another step. I need to take it another step, our coaches need to take it another step, we are so close.”