Here’s why the Charlotte 49ers fired coach Will Healy, and who they should hire next
The Charlotte 49ers fired their former boy wonder head coach Sunday, adding to a remarkably bad year among prominent head coaches in Charlotte.
Will Healy’s fourth Charlotte team had started 1-7 and is widely considered one of the worst squads in college football this season. So his dismissal wasn’t an enormous surprise. And in this city, in 2022, it’s even less of a shock given the way this year has gone.
Healy said in our phone interview Sunday afternoon: “From a production standpoint, from a results standpoint, I didn’t get the job done. Mike (Hill, the Charlotte 49ers’ athletic director) gave me a shot. And ultimately I didn’t do well enough to keep that shot. I don’t believe in blaming it on anything — injuries, COVID, budgets, whatever. Other people did better with their programs with the same issues. We just didn’t win enough games.”
In the past six months, Healy is the fourth well-known head coach to get a pink slip in Charlotte, joining James Borrego (Charlotte Hornets, in April), Miguel Angel Ramirez (Charlotte FC, in May) and Matt Rhule (Carolina Panthers, in October). We’ve seen a seismic change at the top of the city’s sports scene, especially when you include Davidson basketball coach Bob McKillop, who retired on his own terms this summer but was a legend at that school for 33 years.
Said Hill, Charlotte’s AD, in his statement announcing Healy’s firing: “We are grateful to Will Healy for the incredible energy and enthusiasm he brought to our program. He made an impact here that will never be forgotten. Sadly, however, our on-field results have not met expectations.”
Whether it will anytime soon is questionable. Charlotte’s future as a university is bright for sure. Have you been on campus lately? There’s a new building everywhere you look. But the future of the football program itself is cloudy.
Still, Sunday was a hard day for Healy, who was 15-24 during his time at Charlotte. He had to break the news of his firing to a number of people, including his 7-year-old son, who then immediately suggested they go out and play baseball.
Healy said he found out about his own firing on Twitter, shortly before he and Hill had a meeting Sunday at 10 a.m.
“That’s nobody’s fault — it’s just the way of the world — but it’s not a great way to find out,” Healy said. The coach then had a staff meeting at 12:15 p.m., and a players’ meeting shortly after that to tell them about his firing.
“I have no regrets,” said Healy, adding he hopes to coach again immediately somewhere. “Well, just one regret — I wish we could have won more, so I could have kept my job and kept investing in those young people.”
Apathy surrounds Charlotte football
Charlotte’s football program has been around since 2013, started under previous AD Judy Rose, and has had only one winning season in 10 years.
The 49ers’ incoming recruiting classes don’t look good as a whole. The crowds are worse, even in a 15,000-seat stadium that’s tiny for the FBS level. The initial enthusiasm when the program began, and the renewed enthusiasm when Healy was hired and directed Charlotte to its first and only bowl game in 2019, has been largely replaced by apathy.
And apathy is a coach-killer. I believe the twin reasons Healy was fired were these: he couldn’t win anymore, which meant the fans largely gave up on coming, and the spiral just kept heading down, down, down.
Only 33 when he was hired, Healy was one of the youngest head coaches in college football and was liked by pretty much everyone. He was charismatic and offensive-minded and got rumored for bigger head-coaching jobs for a couple of years.
“For the first couple of years here, I would get a lot of questions about ‘When are you going to leave?’” Healy said. “And they meant for other jobs. But this year I started getting the ‘When are you going to leave’ question again, and this time it was because they meant when was I going to get fired. It did change fast.”
Charlotte’s defense in 2022 has been atrocious, which continued a recent theme. The 49ers have lost games by the scores of 43-13, 56-21 and 56-20 this season. They have given up at least 34 points in all eight games.
The 49ers’ high-water mark came in September 2021, when they played a fantastic game to beat Duke 31-28 at home for what was Charlotte’s first and still its only win against a Power Five team. But the results have largely been awful since. The 49ers named offensive line coach Pete Rossomando as interim head coach Sunday.
Time to hire Mike Minter
So the 49ers are starting over, just like the Panthers are. And I have just the coach for them — Campbell head football coach Mike Minter.
Minter, the former starting safety for the Carolina Panthers, is no Johnny-come-lately to the rigors of coaching a team without the natural advantages of an Alabama or Ohio State. He has directed the Campbell Camels for 10 seasons, and at the beginning he had no scholarships to offer at all. Since then he has shepherded Campbell into the Big South, where the Camels have established a solid program after joining the conference in 2018.
Just as importantly, Minter can recruit. And Charlotte simply needs more good players, especially on defense. He’s got his own war stories of playing defense in a Super Bowl for the Panthers and starting for Carolina for 10 years. He’d give the 49ers a chance at the caliber of talent they need.
In the meantime, as the furor over “what’s next” begins among Charlotte 49er fans — at least the non-apathetic ones — spare a kind thought for Healy. He’s a good man who tried hard. His press conference Monday will undoubtedly be gracious.
Boy wonders always have to grow up at some point, and sometimes the transition is tough. Healy will likely become an offensive coordinator somewhere and then get another head-coaching job he will be more prepared for at some point down the line.
“This is part of the profession,” Healy said, “and I still love the profession. I hate the fact that I let people down. But I’m going to keep doing this, and I’ll do a better job next time.”
I don’t blame the 49ers for the decision, though. The 49ers were going nowhere fast.
And if they want a real change of direction, they should hire Minter.
This story was originally published October 23, 2022 at 3:21 PM with the headline "Here’s why the Charlotte 49ers fired coach Will Healy, and who they should hire next."
