Mack Brown addresses North Carolina's constant defensive coordinator changes

North Carolina head coach Mack Brown hired a new defensive coordinator for the third time since returning to Chapel Hill in 2019, parting ways with Gene Chizik and naming Geoff Collins as his new defensive playcaller.

The defensive coordinator job for the Tar Heels has become somewhat of a revolving door lately under Brown, which led to Brown recently being asked why he believes that has been the case.

“You know, we weren’t very good on defense when we got here,” Brown admitted. “We were really good on offense and a lot of the offensive players have been drafted. So we continue to get better defense players. Jay Bateman just got the defensive coordinator job at Texas A&M, so sometimes it’s just the circumstances.”

Brown has been fortunate enough to have two NFL caliber quarterbacks lead his offense in the last five seasons with Sam Howell and Drake Maye. But their fortune on the defensive side of the ball has not been as favorable.

North Carolina has given up 30 points or more in three of Brown’s five seasons since his return to the program. And as Brown has been searching for a defense coordinator to turn things around, offense in the game of football has only continued to grow and evolve.

“And these jobs are hard now, I think there were 37 defensive coordinators fired this year. Hard to play defense, hard to play defense,” Brown repeated. “I’m sitting there interviewing some defensive coordinators that are giving up more points than we did and they’re highly recommended.”

“‘We would’ve all loved them,’ and I’m thinking god-dang, they didn’t stop anybody,” Brown laughed and said covering his face.

Brown’s comments resemble former Alabama head coach Nick Saban‘s recent remarks regarding the difficulties of stopping offenses in college football. But Brown his hoping that Collins can have some solutions to the many problems that modern offenses present to today’s defenses.

“So it’s hard, defense is hard. All the rules have made it for the offense and it’s harder to play safety, it’s harder to play corner. They spread you out so much, it’s harder with tempo because they go so fast, it’s harder to get calls in,” Brown explained. “So there’s a lot of stuff right now that’s hard for defenses and that’s why I wanted a lot of experience.”

Geoff Collins surely brings experience with him to North Carolina with five years of FBS defensive coordinator experience and five more as a head coach, as he’ll look to turn around a Tar Heels’ defense that’s struggled on the defensive side of the ball quite some time now.