page_title: North Carolina Tar Heels football
section_title: Larry Fedora era (2012–2018)
hierarchical_section_title: North Carolina Tar Heels football / History / Larry Fedora era (2012–2018)
caption_attribution_description: English: Larry Fedora, head coach of the North Carolina Tar Heels
context_page_description: The North Carolina Tar Heels football team represents the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in the sport of American football. The Tar Heels play in the Football Bowl Subdivision of the National Collegiate Athletic Association and the Coastal Division of the Atlantic Coast Conference.
  North Carolina has played in 34 bowl games in its history and won three Southern Conference championships and five Atlantic Coast Conference titles. Thirty Tar Heel players have been honored as first-team All-Americas on 38 occasions. Carolina had 32 All-Southern Conference selections when it played in that league until 1952 and since joining the ACC in 1953, has had 174 first-team All-ACC choices. Since joining the Atlantic Coast Conference in 1953, the team has won five conference championships, with the most recent title coming in 1980.
  One very important contribution to the game of football by Carolina is the modern use of the forward pass; they were the first college team to use the play in 1895. Bob Quincy notes in his 1973 book They Made the Bell Tower Chime:
context_section_description: Larry Fedora was hired from Southern Miss in late 2011 as the Tar Heels' 34th head football coach, replacing Withers. In his first year as head coach, in a season that the UNC football team was ineligible for the ACC title (due to sanctions from Davis' tenure), a bowl game and a ranking in the USA Today Coaches' Poll, Fedora led the team to an 8–4 record. North Carolina had at least eight victories in four of the five years from 2008 to 2012. The eight wins in 2008 and 2009 were vacated due to NCAA penalty. The last time North Carolina had more than eight victories was in 1997.
  After starting the 2013 season 1–5, Fedora's Tar Heels rebounded to finish 5–1 in their final six regular season games and capped the season with a thrashing of Cincinnati in the Belk Bowl to finish the season with a 7–6 record. After the 2013 season, offensive coordinator Blake Anderson left the Tar Heels to accept the head coaching position at Arkansas State.
  The Tar Heels went into the 2014 season with a new offensive coordinator, Seth Littrell. That year, the Tar Heels were never able to achieve much consistency on defense, giving up over 497 yards per game (111th in the nation, and fourth-worst among Power 5 teams) en route to a 6–6 regular season and a 40–21 loss to Rutgers in the 2014 Quick Lane Bowl. In an effort to address this, Fedora fired defensive coordinator Vic Koenning after the season and hired former Iowa State and Auburn head coach Gene Chizik as defensive coordinator.
  In 2015, Fedora led the Tar Heels to an 11–1 regular season and the team's first ACC Coastal Division championship. The team also finished with a perfect 8–0 record in conference play and were ranked as high as #8 in the AP and Coaches' Polls, their highest ranking since 1997. In the 2015 ACC Championship Game, the Tar Heels lost to Clemson by a score of 45–37, despite a controversial onside kick penalty. The Tar Heels then lost in the Russell Athletic Bowl to Baylor 49–38. The Tar Heels finished the season 11–3 (8–0 ACC) and ranked 15th in the country, marking the team's first postseason Top 25 ranking since 1997. After the 2015 season, offensive coordinator Seth Littrell left Carolina to take the head coaching position at North Texas.
  In 2016, Fedora led the Tar Heels to an 8–5 (5–3) record. Carolina began the season with a loss to Georgia in the Chick-fil-A Kickoff Game in Atlanta by a score of 33–24. Carolina then reeled off four straight wins, which included an upset win over No. 12 Florida State in Tallahassee by a score of 37–35 after a game-winning field goal as time expired, snapping the Seminoles' 22-game home winning streak. UNC then suffered an embarrassing home loss to Virginia Tech by a score of 34–3. After losing to NC State in the regular season finale, the Tar Heels, who were led by star quarterback Mitch Trubisky, lost in the Sun Bowl to Stanford by a score of 25–23. Following the 2016 season, defensive coordinator Gene Chizik resigned to spend more time with his family in Auburn, Alabama. Fedora promoted linebackers coach John Papuchis to replace Chizik as defensive coordinator.  After only winning 5 games in his last two seasons, Fedora was fired.
caption: Coach Fedora
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