Mack Brown voices frustration with NCAA’s coaching rules for staff

Mack Brown and North Carolina recently hired Clyde Christensen to be an offensive analyst. The longtime assistant was most recently Tom Brady’s quarterback coach with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. However, he won’t be able to directly coach the quarterbacks at North Carolina.

That’s due to the NCAA’s rules about how many coaches are allowed to directly coach players. As an analyst, Christensen can’t. This prompted Brown to complain about those rules.

“We all think the NCAA should allow everybody to coach because it’s a rule that they can’t enforce, and it’s broken in most of the universities across the country,” Mack Brown said. “And, it’s frustrating for us because we’re doing it right.”

Mack Brown explained that there are ways to legally skirt the rules. Because of this and how difficult the rules are to enforce, it makes them relatively silly.

“Ours have to stand there and talk through a coach or they can — obviously — Clyde can talk to Chip [Lindsey] in the quarterback room and the rest of them can hear it, but he can’t coach them individually, especially on the field. So, that should change. We’re hoping that changes in April. And there is absolutely no reason it shouldn’t change because compliance has to worry about it and then it’s a tough thing for them.”

Until the rules change, analysts still need to act as analysts and can’t legally coach players. So, Mack Brown and North Carolina will have to wait for change before those roles advance.

“But, right now, Clyde is in the quarterback room. He’s in the offensive staff room. He’s giving ideas to Chip. He can talk to chip about the evaluation of all the quarterbacks because we know how important — Drake [Maye] has got things he really wants to improve. He’s talked about his footwork and his throwing motion, stand in the pocket better. who better to help with that than Clyde and Chip?” Brown said.

“The same with Ted [Monachino]. Ted’s in every defensive meeting. He’ll move around. He’ll be in the defensive line meeting some, he’ll be in the linebacker meeting some. He’s evaluating our meetings. So, he’s going to look and see a presentation here, ‘that confused me a bit, I’d do this differently.’ So, we’re really being hard on each other to ask everybody to step up and have a better team.”

Mack Brown on where Drake Maye needs to improve

In 2023, North Carolina is going to rely on future first-round quarterback Drake Maye. Still, Mack Brown also knows that there are places where Maye needs to improve.

“Drake can really improve in a lot of areas, and he would be the first to tell you,” Brown said.

“He really wants to work on his footwork because he’s so talented he can throw the ball off-balance and without footwork and still be really good. He wants to work on his throwing motion some. He wants to work on having a better presence in the pocket so he doesn’t drift. Because some of those, he’d readily admit, he and Sam [Howell], some of the sacks were on the quarterback because they’ve got to get rid of the ball…You’ve got to drop the ball off more, we can’t always go for the deep ball.”