Immediately after sending Larry Fedora’s North Carolina to a dismal 1-7 record on Nov. 3, Georgia Tech head coach Paul Johnson stumped for the Tar Heels’ head coach:
Other coaches still believe in Larry Fedora at UNC
The North Carolina head coach’s peers see a lot of explanations for the Heels’ current struggles.
Photo by Brett Carlsen/Getty Images
In the coaching industry, Johnson is the antithesis of a networker. He has no apparent ulterior motive to speak positively about Fedora. Also of note: He’s Paul Johnson. He says what he believes when he wants to, and he supported Fedora.
To be clear: Among coaches, UNC is considered a job that will open this season if the school is willing to swallow a buyout. It’s a job that has a lot of interest from potential candidates. But the difference between UNC and other current or potential openings — Rutgers, Kansas, Louisville, etc. — is that among coaches who spoke to SB Nation, it’s not considered a from-scratch rebuild or in need of a massive overhaul.
In fact, time and again, coaches around the industry praise the overall job Fedora has done in Chapel Hill. Johnson’s not alone. Fedora has been labeled as a good coach and program manager stuck in a cascade of bad luck and bad timing.
But be it luck or timing or coaching, the numbers are bad: UNC has skidded to 16 losses (and counting) in two seasons after winning 19 games the previous two years. 247 Sports currently ranks UNC’s 2019 signing class 12th in the ACC. There’s an inarguable valley here. So why do so many coaches think Fedora deserves to stay and work out of it?
Coaches laud Fedora for his steady hand during North Carolina’s interminable NCAA scandal.
The conversation surrounding the insane length of NCAA investigations always starts with UNC. The NCAA investigation into academic fraud that wrapped in 2017 started all the way back in the summer of 2010, when the football program was investigated first for players receiving benefits and gifts from sports agents.
The Heels hired Fedora after firing Butch Davis in 2011. He took the job without knowing the eventual NCAA punishment (one-year bowl ban in 2012, 15 scholarships over three years). Fedora was also unaware that the NCAA would keep haunting campus for years, investigating claims of academic fraud across multiple sports from before Fedora’s time.
Throughout the saga, Fedora was courted by other programs with inarguably more football tradition and deeper pockets than UNC (he could’ve replaced Derek Dooley at Tennessee), yet he elected to stay in Chapel Hill.
“He stuck around when I wouldn’t have. He put up with a whole, whole lot. I think it was because he knew he could eventually build something and he’d earn their respect to get the benefit of the doubt,” an ACC head coach told SB Nation.
2018 showed signs of a bounceback year, after 2017 had been marred by injured players missing games.
But 2018 has been a run of more suspensions and injuries.
“You see what they tried to be [this season] on film, and it’s not a bad scheme or bad talent thing,” a SEC assistant coach told SB Nation. “We’ve looked at their film the past two years, and it’s a lot of bad circumstances.”
Among those is a total mess at quarterback. Projected starter Chazz Surratt was among 13 UNC players suspended at the beginning of the season for selling team-issued apparel online, requiring UNC to report a secondary violation to the NCAA. Replacement Nathan Elliott has struggled, and Surratt had season-ending surgery after returning from the four-game suspension. In Week 10’s loss to Tech, UNC benched Elliott in favor of freshman Jace Ruder, who got injured after leading a touchdown drive to start the second half. Don’t confuse Ruder with Cade Fortin, another injured freshman quarterback UNC tried to jumpstart their offense with.
And while the Heels are still losing, at least they’re no longer getting blown out?
UNC started 1-3 with a 37-point loss to Miami and a 22-point loss to ... [checks notes] East Carolina, which was enough for us regular folks to write them off.
Since Miami, they’ve lost by three to Virginia Tech, three in OT to Syracuse, 10 to Virginia, and 10 to Georgia Tech, a game where 18 UNC players were unavailable and more (Ruder) were injured during.
“That’s one of two things: parity in the conference, which helps his case, or good coaching and your kids not giving up when they could, which helps his case,” the assistant coach said.
“Usually if there isn’t a financial reason to fire a coach before the end of the season, the only reason you’d do it is because they’ve lost the team. It doesn’t look like that there.”
North Carolina is considered a job that should be successful, and that kind of thinking scares coaches.
The UNC job is fantastic — on paper. You’re in a talented state for recruits and close to neighboring hotbeds, you’re in a Power 5 conference, and your brand is national (albeit in another sport).
But it’s never proved to be a recipe for sustained success. What’s considered the best of times for UNC football? Mack Brown? The national title-winning coach (at Texas) had a winning percentage of .600 over 10 seasons. Fedora is .518 since 2012.
“There’s a group of schools in the conference that assume they can become a great team, a national power, by making that one right hire and being in the ACC and around good talent with a nice campus. That’s not enough. Clemson is enough, everything Clemson did to catch up with what Florida State and Miami did before them,” a head coach in the conference said.
“So then you come in at one of those schools and start winning a little bit and ‘Ah, OK! This guy’s figured it out.’ And they don’t understand all the other things you have to do to keep that going, and then you lose.”
It’s very possible none of this will save Fedora’s job. Just ask any other coach.
There’s also the issue of Fedora’s preseason comments about the “war on football” in regards to CTE and head trauma during ACC media days this summer. Put aside Fedora’s comments and intent for a second, and it was an unforced error for a coach who doesn’t have the rare kind of equity that would withstand a PR faux pas. Do those comments have any impact on the referendum on his job right now? We don’t know.
Fedora received a seven-year extension to his contract before the ‘17 season, and his buyout is in the range of $12 million, and maybe even higher. For Bubba Cunningham, an AD who arrived in Chapel Hill at the same time as Fedora, that seems too steep a price.
However, if the overall job market slows this year, an opening at UNC could draw a higher level of talent than in other cycles.
“There’s no shortage of coaches who want that job,” one agent told SB Nation. “They’ll come in and pitch how great UNC is to recruit to, how you can get talent there, all the things you hear with that job, and they know the roster is better than what you’d normally get taking over a two- or three-win team.”
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