UNC football players, defensive coordinator try to move on from JMU debacle

In his news conference Monday, UNC football defensive coordinator Geoff Collins displayed both accountability and optimism just two days after a loss to James Madison in which his team allowed a program-record 70 points and more than 600 yards.

“When we don’t perform to the standard that we have, then I blame myself,” Collins said. “What could I have done better? What adjustments could I have made better? What things could I have simplified throughout the week so we don’t have coverage busts or we don’t miss assignments?”

He described the sleepless nights that followed Saturday’s historic 70-50 loss to JMU. Collins emphasized that while his players have shown great promise in earlier games, their defensive breakdowns were a result of poor communication and execution. He candidly took responsibility for the defensive failures.

And yet, Collins said his players weren’t willing to let him shoulder the blame alone.

“These guys are amazing,” Collins said. “They’re like, ‘Coach, this ain’t on you. This is all of is. We’ll get it fixed. This is one game. This will never happen again.’”

Many players continued to text Collins words of encouragement throughout Saturday night, he said. Collins praised his corps for taking ownership and expressing their determination to fix things.

“They were hurt,” Collins said. “They didn’t feel great about the product that we put on the field, but they were forward-thinking.”

One of the central themes of the press conference was the defense’s communication and rotation issues, particularly in the secondary. On Saturday, JMU recorded seven throws of 15 or more yards. Approximately 70 percent of the Dukes’ passing yards came from those few, explosive plays.

When the back end of the defense miscommunicates, Collins said, the errors are glaring and costly because there’s no secondary layer of defense to fix the mistake.

“If you have a miscommunication on the back end, and they find it, then it’s going to be an explosive,” Collins said. “And we had way too many of them.”

When asked about the potential need to overhaul the defensive scheme, Collins was firm in his stance. He believed it wasn’t a matter of the scheme being flawed, but players trying to overcompensate in the heat of the moment — leading to further mistakes.

His focus moving forward will be on cleaning up those individual mistakes and building “trust equity,” as he put it.

“Let’s just play the structure of the defense,” he said. “Play clean, run to the football, those kinds of things.”

Despite the loss, Collins was optimistic about UNC’s overall trajectory.

He praised the leadership within the team — particularly from linebackers Kaimon Rucker (still sidelined due to injury) and Power Echols — noting the steadiness, passion and maturity players showed even as the game spiraled.

Note: This week’s regularly-scheduled UNC player press conference was canceled. A spokesman for the team said this is to help the Tar Heels focus on Duke, their next opponent.

No athletes were made available to the media following the team’s loss to JMU on Saturday.

“We’ve got the right players and we’ve got the right coaches,” Collins said on Monday. “We had a practice yesterday that went really good. All of the adjustments and corrections and first steps toward Duke were really positive.”