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Less than a week after the North Carolina Tar Heels ended their season with a 55-13 victory over Temple in the Military Bowl, the football program made a coaching change. As first reported by Inside Carolina, UNC’s Special Teams Coordinator/Outside Linebackers Coach Scott Boone was relieved of his duties.
In a statement by Jeremy Sharpe, UNC’s Director of Football Communications and Branding, to Inside Carolina, it was a “mutual decision”:
We appreciate all that he did for us this season in helping us get to and win the bowl game, but after the season, there were some philosophical differences and a mutual decision to part ways. We will start a national search for a special teams coordinator, who also has experience coaching linebackers, immediately.
There were some struggles this season in the kicking and punting games. One of the notable areas of regression was punt returns. A year after averaging 14.3 yards per return and one touchdown, the unit was down to 6.2 yards per return and no touchdowns.
Below is a breakdown of the special team stats and league rankings:
2019 UNC Special Teams Stats
| Punting | Number | Yards | Average per Punt | Return Yards | Average Return Yards | Touchbacks | Fair Catches | Net | ACC Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Punting | Number | Yards | Average per Punt | Return Yards | Average Return Yards | Touchbacks | Fair Catches | Net | ACC Rank |
| 60 | 2479 | 41.3 | 139 | 2.3 | 4 | 23 | 39 | 12 | |
| Kickoff Returns | Number | Yards | TDs | Average | ACC Rank | ||||
| 24 | 518 | 0 | 21.6 | 6 | |||||
| Punt Returns | Number | Yards | TDs | Average | ACC Rank | ||||
| 13 | 81 | 0 | 6.2 | 10 | |||||
| Kickoffs | Number | Yards | Average | Return Yards | Touchbacks | Net | ACC Rank | ||
| 81 | 4976 | 61.4 | 721 | 41 | 39.9 | 6 | |||
| Field Goals | Attempts | Made | Percentage | ACC Rank | |||||
| 28 | 19 | 0.679 | 8 | ||||||
| Point After Touchdown | Attempts | Made | Percentage | ACC Rank | |||||
| 49 | 49 | 1 | 1 |
Best of luck to Coach Boone. THB will keep you updated during the coaching search.