If the North Carolina football team’s head coach, Larry Fedora, coached your intramural flag football team, would you automatically win the championship?
Your team isn’t starting from scratch. You’ve got plenty of talent, but not much in the way of experience.
Fedora would install plays and provide structure to your offense. He would know how to get the ball to your best athlete. His playbook and route combinations would open up holes in the other team’s defense.
He’d simplify the playbook for your quarterback and tailor the offense around throws he could make. Some fun trick plays would cover up some of the deficiencies in your offense.
He wouldn't fret too much about your team's defense, knowing that you'd only need to hold the opponent to one less point than your offense.
All in all, your team would probably be pretty good.
This is what Fedora does. He’s dedicated his entire adult life to coaching and studying football. He graduated from Austin College in 1985 and started as a graduate assistant there in 1986. The next year, he coached at Garland (Texas) High School, and he’s been working full time ever since — with stops at Baylor, Florida and Oklahoma State and a head coaching job at Southern Miss.
In coaching circles, Fedora is known as an offensive mastermind. He has his own brand of the spread offense, a balanced attack that forces the defense to decide where the football goes. UNC has showcased it the past five seasons to great success.
His offenses also mold to the talents working within them: run-heavy for Giovani Bernard, zone reads for Marquise Williams, tossing the keys to the whole thing to Mitch Trubisky in 2016. But Trubisky, Ryan Switzer, Elijah Hood and a host of other offensive pieces he’s built around in the past have graduated or declared for the NFL Draft.
