Gene Chizik and UNC are parting ways

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Sign up now at ChumbaCasino.com. Especially in light of Gene Chiswick's decision, not only Gene Chiswick, but also Mack Brown to mutually part ways as defensive coordinator at UNC. Al, appreciate your time, man. What are your thoughts on the departure of Gene Chiswick?

Good to be with you, Adam. I think that Gene Chiswick is an old friend of Mack Brown's. And I think that this is a very polite way to say that since the end of the season, this was going to be inevitable.

And, you know, they don't want to, they pulled Gene out of retirement to do this. And you don't want to say that he was let go, but there have been some rumors kind of floating around up and confirmed, but some rumors floating around on Twitter based on the way that the team played the Duke's Mayo ball, that maybe someone else was doing the play calls because the defense actually seemed to play with a different pep than they had by the end of the season. So that there seems to, they seem to be, it wasn't quite the same Duke's Mayo bowl performance for about a couple of years ago.

That was a lot more lackluster, at least on the, you can, you can explain the little more explainable as to what happened this time around. Yeah. You know, you saw, you said it on Twitter when it happened, it just, I think everybody that's followed the program understands it's inevitable. The bigger question is going to be, you know, who they can bring in to satisfy everybody to, to finally get a defense to match an offense that has a ton of questions going into next year. Al Hood is joining us here from Tar Heel Blog.

You can follow him on Twitter at albhood. So it was weird. Cause I mentioned this at the very top that I would, last week, this is before the, the, the, the mayonnaise game. I was, I think I was already in Florida for a soccer showcase with my son and I'm just following stuff on social media and like, it just struck me that, Hey, has Gene Chizik left the program?

And I legitimately did a Google search. I mean, Gene Chizik, UNC, figuring that I was going to see a story that had that, uh, you know, had them departing. So I thought, well, um, maybe that's true as it turned out not.

Uh, but as it turned out, maybe they knew something, maybe whatever I was reading, uh, was sort of tipping what was going to happen. So let me just ask this question this way. Um, was it a success? Was the Chizik two year run a success? Did it accomplish anything? I mean, that's a, I don't know if that's something that you can answer in just a couple of seconds.

Um, I mean, the very short answer is probably going to be no. Uh, I know you've been talking about this during the day here that, um, I mean, how can you look at the way that the team just completely fell flat defensively at the end of the season? They looked completely different starting with that Virginia game, uh, and then again, short attack. And then the fact that Duke went as tight as it was, uh, they regressed in so many different areas. Um, you, and what's so disappointing about it is the way that the season started off. He felt like that they had at least a competent defense to match a good, if not great offense.

Um, and then they just, you know, the same problems that they ended with last season crept up again. So when you've got someone like Drake May, who at the very worst is going to go second in the NFL draft. And there's some people that are talking about him being first.

I don't think he'll go first, but you know, you're going to have a showcase quarterback. You look back at what Carolina accomplished in the two years. They had someone like Drake May and I mean, all you have are just two, all you have are two bowl losses. Um, the faint hope of getting into the CFP in the middle of the season, but ultimately two just catastrophic collapses that ended with a third of the team just opting out of playing in the ball game. Yeah, I think to me, the ball game doesn't even matter. It's, I mean, I think it's the loss to Virginia and the manner in which they lost to Virginia. You can't blow a double digit lead at home to a bad team. I mean, no, I mean, I was going to say, especially coming off, I was at the Miami game the week before, especially coming off that that felt like such a getting over the hump game. It felt like the, okay, you are allowed to actually believe in this team.

Now they went on prime time on national television. They, uh, they survived the big test. They bought, you know, they went against the team that had every intention and every reason to beat them big crowd. They survived the hype, you know, and now you just come into the easy part of the schedule and the easy part of the schedule is what tripped them up.

And you just, you can't, there's no, there's just really no rhyme or reason or excuse for it. And you can't blame the offense. I mean, where was the offense perfect during that? Absolutely not. But the offense is never going to be perfect.

A hundred percent of the time you have to have a good defense to carry you with that too. Allahood is joining us here from Tar Heel blog. Um, the, the way I've jumped this forward is if I were North Carolina, I would be looking to hire the next head coach with this hire. And I'm not hiring a head coach here, but I am hiring somebody with the idea that he can be the next head coach.

Cause I don't, I just don't think the program is going to advance any anywhere beyond where it is today. Uh, how do you feel about that? Well, especially what sort of defensive coordinator are you going to actually, what quality of defensive coordinator are you going to actually get to come to Chapel Hill, unless they think that he has a chance of actually being the head coach. That's the other part that you have to look at here.

Like it's not a, I mean, it's an open secret. I mean, Mac is saying the right things in terms of leaving it up in the air about when he'll leave and you have to do that for recruiting purposes. But I mean, at this point we're five seasons in, you know, that he's not going to be coaching for that much longer. And if you're a defensive coordinator, if you're a decent defensive coordinator, why would you want to come in on just a one or two year project? Just then to turn around and try to get a coaching job somewhere else. No, you're thinking about being there for the longterm.

And that has to be that mindset. Now the question is going to be, who's actually going to be leading this search? Is it going, are they going to give free hand to Mac on this? Or is Bubba Cunningham going to actually step in and have some say into this? And is that going to dictate what type of coach they ultimately end up getting? That's going to be a big part of it too.

I mean, I honestly, I think you could do both. I think, I think Bubba Cunningham can give Mac direction in this regard and tell Mac, look, we know you're not going to be doing this forever. Hire with an eye on the guy who's next.

Let that be your legacy. Why can't they do something like that? Like I'm not asking to hire the same guy that, that Syracuse hired, you know, the guy from Georgia, right?

The defensive back coach from Georgia. You could do something like that. Yeah. The problem is, is that Mac has done kind of the, you have to be careful because Mac has kind of done the coaching waiting thing before he, that he was trying to do that at Texas and that will must champion. Yeah, that kind of failed spectacularly. So it's because Mac didn't want to go because Mac didn't want to be, they didn't want to leave. That's the problem.

And that's the problem, but that's also the problem here. Like he's not giving us any indications that he wants to leave anytime soon. Like, you know, you do, I mean, you do wonder if this season had finished better if Drake, if they, even if they didn't make it to the CFP, but say they get, you know, they finish, you know, 12, you know, finished 10 and two, get to the ACC championship, pull off a surprise, which they could have done with the way Florida state was weakened.

They absolutely could have, they could have pulled off a win there. You know, is that enough to where Mac says, you know what, that's where I got my, I got this program. It's first ACC title in 40 years. I'm about to send the guy to the NFL draft is a top pick. This is good.

I'm going to ride out. Now he's feeling he's he's now he's kind of chasing that legacy. And you know, you just wonder just when, when is he going to feel like that he's done enough to get to reestablish Carolina to where fans and to some extent, even he thought it should be at least getting it back to the level it was when he left back in 1997.

And, you know, he feels like he's, he needs some, you know, he pulls the Roy Williams and say, Okay, it's time for someone else to take over. Before I let Al Hood go real quick, because I know you're a big hurricanes fan. If I had told you I pose this as a hypothetical. If I had told you right around Thanksgiving, that the hurricanes best stretch of now seven, one and three in terms of results would be based on two things and two things only great goaltending and the best power play on planet Earth. You would have said what to me? What did you take on your holiday vacation?

And did you bring some back with you? Exactly. How do we process this?

I don't know. But you know, watching the watching both the basketball and the hockey game last night, that was a really fun two and a half hours when you're a fan of both when you're fan of both Carolina basketball and the hurricanes. That was a it was a lot.

It was a lot to enjoy. But hey, I mean, it does kind of break down to something simple. I mean, the power play works and the goalie actually provides good goaltending. All of a sudden, you start winning a lot more games.

You do. I just I just want to see them win the way they're built to win. Well, I'm not used to this. I want the third period last night against the Rangers was spectacular five on five. So maybe they can build up they were so and then, as you said, the power play looked a lot like it had been until until before you started scoring everything.

So but no, I'll take it. I mean, everything's gotten so bunched up. It's nice to see them actually starting to get at least a little bit of separation from the from all those teams behind them, even if it's only a couple of points. And the one thing I was telling myself is that I know Mike and Trip lean on this a lot is that their schedule at the beginning of the season in terms of how much traveling they did, how much back to back they had was so brutal. And I'd always I had hung my hat on the fact that once we get to this part of the schedule like the that once they get home on Saturday after playing in D.C., I think they leave once the rest of the month. And into February, only the game at Boston. Yeah, and they're not exactly playing a lot of powerhouses during that time either. And there are a lot of only two game weeks. So you feel like that if they could just get to that, that there was a there was a built in period. If you could get in there relatively healthy, there was a built in period where they could start to make a run. And it's nice to see them going on ahead and going on ahead and starting to get that started now.

It's been they've gotten away with being reliant on a power play, which I don't believe hurricanes fans have ever have said out loud in like a decade. Al Mann, I'll talk to you very soon. Thank you so much. No problem, Adam. Thank you so much. You got it at Al B. Hood from Tario blog with Lucky Land slots.

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