North Carolina Tar Heels: Gene Chizik Steps Down from UNC
The North Carolina Tar Heels continue a year of turnover on the defensive staff.
The North Carolina Tar Heels seem to be in the habit of losing a coordinator a year. Three years ago it was Blake Anderson leaving for Arkansas State as a head coach. Last year Seth Littrell left for the North Texas coaching job. Now the Tar Heels must add their next departure as defensive coordinator Gene Chizik has stepped down to spend more time with his family.
Chizik, the former national championship winning coach at Auburn, was brought in with a host of new defensive assistants to turn the Carolina defense around. Over the last two years some real progress has been made in that direction, but the process was not quite complete. The work will have to continue without one with such a resume as Chizik.
The Tar Heels almost certainly had a succession plan in place from the beginning when they brought in former Nebraska defensive coordinator John Papuchis to be the linebackers coach back when Chizik was hired. Probably the assumption was that Chizik would take a head coaching job somewhere and then Papuchis would step in. It didn’t work exactly that way but the effect was the same.
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Papuchis will be the new defensive coordinator and oversee a staff that has been through big changes in the off-season. Charlton Warren left to take up secondary duties at Tennessee, meaning the staff is now down two men with coordinator level experience. Papuchis will now have to lean on newcomers like Deke Adams (defensive line).
The Papuchis promotion should mean more stability than chaos. All indications are that the Tar Heels are going to run the same kind of defense that they have been running under Chizik in the last two years. Meanwhile it wouldn’t be Carolina football if it was not just a little bit unpredictable.