FSU football: Ranking all the top coaches in the ACC
By Kelvin Hunt
Mack Brown-North Carolina
Mack Brown brings a 274-144 overall record into the 2023 season. Brown had North Carolina humming with back-to-back 10-win seasons in the mid-to-late 90s before leaving for Texas.
A winner of a National Championship at Texas in 2005, those days of fielding elite teams have been long gone, as Brown hasn’t won more than nine games in a season since losing in the National Championship game in 2009.
Brown’s return to North Carolina in 2019 after five years away from the game has yielded mixed results overall, but he has returned North Carolina to respectability. They hadn’t made a bowl game in the two years befor his arrival.
Brown has gone 30-12 since returning to North Carolina, with 20 wins in the weak ACC Coastal Division while fielding NFL talent at the QB position. His teams consistently underachieve, losing to bad teams a number of times, including FSU in 2020 and 2021.
North Carolina won nine games in 2022 but could have easily lost four more games while playing a schedule full of weak teams. This aspect allowed them to win the ACC Coastal Division to face Clemson in the ACC Championship game.