UNC Football Hopes to Rebound As Illinois Seeks Signature Win For Lovie Smith

Early last season when the UNC football team was searching for credibility, it orchestrated a 48-14 blowout of a reeling Illinois team which had just fired head coach Tim Beckman.

Coming off a deflating loss to Georgia this past weekend, the Tar Heels again find themselves in a similar scenario.

The Fighting Illini, however, are now led by longtime NFL head coach Lovie Smith—and will present an entirely new challenge.

Around the UNC practice fields this week, there hasn’t been much talk about last season’s win over Illinois—despite the return of some similar faces, such as quarterback Wes Lunt.

That all has to do with Smith, the man who has been coaching at the NFL level since 1996. As head coach of the Chicago Bears in 2006, he became the first African-American to ever lead his team to an appearance in the Super Bowl.

After a failed stint with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers in recent years, though, Smith and his no-nonsense style have found their way back to the college ranks—where his Illini defeated Murray State 52-3 in their season opener.

UNC head coach Larry Fedora said after watching that game that Smith hasn’t show too many of his cards yet, instead opting for a game plan that was very “vanilla.”

“One thing I can tell you about Lovie Smith—at least what I know from the past and what I’ve heard about Lovie—is that he’s not gonna be real exotic in what he does,” Fedora said at his weekly press conference Monday. “He’s gonna line up, his guys are gonna know what to do and they’re gonna play really hard.

“When we looked at that Murray State film, that’s exactly what we saw.”

Because the Tar Heels have such limited film on this brand new Illinois team, they’ve instead opted to study tape of Smith’s NFL squads.

Junior wide receiver Austin Proehl—the son of Carolina Panthers’ receivers coach Ricky Proehl—has been able to lean on his dad extra heavily this week as the Panthers are division rivals with the Buccaneers, where Smith coached each of the last two seasons.

“It’s one of those things where Lovie Smith is Lovie Smith,” Proehl said after Wednesday’s practice. “The thing about it is, my film study this week has been the Panthers vs. the Bucs. I’m getting all of my dad’s stuff in from last year, so I’ve got two games worth of everything [Smith] did.”

“With what he’s done in his career, he’s not gonna change anything,” Proehl continued. “He believes in what he believes in.”

Above all else, Smith has always been known as someone who preaches defense first.  His “Cover 2” scheme on that side of the ball played a major factor in all of the success he had at the pro level.

As UNC looks to recover from the offensive funk it slipped into against Georgia—especially in the passing game–senior wideout Ryan Switzer expects Illinois to run Smith’s playbook, but knows college football presents more opportunities to try different tactics.

“In the league they don’t play many coverages, but they play the coverages they play really well,” Switzer said. “We’re expecting some Cover 2, but we have to be prepared for whatever they throw at us.”

Of course, UNC of all schools should know just what it means to bring in a coach with championship pedigree. Sure, defensive coordinator Gene Chizik hasn’t been to a Super Bowl but he has won a pair of national title rings at the college level.

In Chizik’s first season on the job in 2015, the Tar Heels were the most improved unit in the country in terms of scoring defense, despite not adding much in terms of new talent.

That type of credibility motivates players in a different kind of way—something Illinois hopes will push UNC to the limit in Smith’s first marquee game on Saturday.

“Anytime you get a guy of [Smith’s] caliber who’s been around the game so long—especially been around the pro game, which all those guys I’m sure are aspiring to get to—that definitely brings new motivation,” Switzer said.

“With them being at home, being a night game, new year, new staff—there’s a lot of things going well for them,” he added. “We know it’s gonna be a test.”