How will Mark Carney’s promotion affect the Charlotte 49ers offense? Let him explain
It was a few weeks before the 2004 college football season was to begin at Richmond. Spiders quarterbacks coach Mark Carney sat in a meeting with head coach Dave Clawson, ready to deliver a tough message to a player who had been competing to be the team’s starting quarterback.
The player was Will Healy, a freshman transfer from Air Force who had worked tirelessly during the summer to win the starting job with his new team.
But Clawson and Carney told Healy he hadn’t done enough to earn the job. After the meeting, Carney and a crestfallen Healy went to a stairwell and talked some more.
“He was a little mopey about it,” Carney says now. “But those are always tough conversations to have. I said, ‘Listen man, this is not the first time you’re going to get bad news in your life. You’ve got a choice to make: You can dwell on it and let it ruin your day and affect practice. Because you’re disappointed right now, that’s OK. But don’t be discouraged. Don’t let it affect what comes next.”
Healy didn’t. After spending his career at Richmond as a backup, Healy is now entering his second season as the Charlotte 49ers’ head coach. And he recently promoted Carney — the guy who basically benched him 16 years ago — from Charlotte’s quarterbacks coach to offensive coordinator, replacing Alex Atkins, who’s now coaching Florida State’s offensive line.
It’s a unique dynamic: an assistant coach working for a head coach who used to be one of his players. But that’s what Charlotte has in the Healy-Carney relationship, and it’s working so far.
Healy hired Carney from Division II Virginia State, where he’d been offensive coordinator from 2015-18. Carney spent the first five seasons of his career at Richmond, before moving to Bowling Green as receivers coach from 2009-13 and Baldwin-Wallace (Ohio) as offensive coordinator in 2014.
The Observer’s David Scott sat down earlier this week with Carney, 39, to talk about his relationship with Healy, and how he hopes Charlotte’s offense can take another step after last season’s success that saw the 49ers finish 7-6 and play in a bowl for the first time in program history. Answers were edited for brevity and clarity.
Q. What’s it like working for a guy you used to coach?
“I was only 24 when I started at Richmond, the same year he got there. I was barely shaving. Sometimes our relationship was big brother-little brother, sometimes it was friend-to-friend. But we always had great mutual respect over the years. That’s my goal with everybody.
“So now it’s grown over the years to boss and employee. At the center of it all is the love, respect and admiration we have for each other. Before every game I hug him and tell him, ‘I love you, man.’ And it’s not some fake, side-hug thing, either.”
Q. You’re in charge of the entire offense now. What’s your offensive philosophy?
“To get players the ball in space with advantageous numbers and let them work. Any good coach plays to the strengths of the talents of the guys on the team. It’s a cliche, but don’t tell me what I can’t do. Figure out what I can do and use those things. So it’s primarily personnel driven.”
Q. Who are some of the major influences you’ve had as a coach?
“Number one is Dave Clawson, who I played for at Fordham and coached under at Richmond. From a philosophy standpoint, what I do is based on what I learned through working with Dave.
“Warren Ruggiero, who’s with Dave now at Wake Forest and who I was with at Bowling Green, expanded my mind from one system to a whole different way of looking at things. With Dave, it was very West Coast, the way Joe Montana did it in the (San Francisco) 49ers glory years. At Bowling Green, we had more of a spread personnel team and evolved from there. I learned more about spreading the field to make the other team defend the entire field.
“And Mike London, who I only worked for one year at Richmond, the way he emphasized family. It was nothing like I’d ever been a part of before. He’d literally stand at your door at 6:30 and make you go home after practice. We worked so many hours, he didn’t want to affect home. He’d always say come in early as you want tomorrow morning, but I want you to go home now. I got a lot of those values from coach London and I know Will did, too.
“I also learned a lot from Alex (Atkins) in the short time we were together. The way he was able to utilize personnel groupings and play to the strength of the guys ready to go for us on Saturday. He’d present the defense with things they hadn’t defended at all, or very much, or very well, and we’d attack them as such.”
Q. What’s the next step for quarterback Chris Reynolds?
“We’ve just scratched the surface with what he can do as a play maker. He’s so driven. The first thing he said to me after he gave me a hug when I came down from the (coaches) box at the Bahamas Bowl, was, ‘OK, now we’ve really got work to do.’ This guy gets it. He understands it.
“From a leadership perspective, he inspires confidence in how he uses the voice he has with the team. There’s a fine line between ‘Been there, done it, now follow me by watching’ and what he does, which is, ‘Hey, I’m going to help you with the things that made me successful and might work for you.’
“He’s as prepared and as studied as anybody I’ve ever seen. We have meetings for countless hours and I can’t get rid of him. He’s like a stain or something. He sits in here and wants to know, ‘What should I do, what should I see? Should I look at this a different way?’ Being inquisitive has helped him as a player. Knowledge is power.”
Q. You’ll lose running back Benny LeMay to graduation. What have you seen in Tre Harbison, a grad transfer from Northern Illinois who rushed for more than 1,000 yards in each of the past two seasons?
“He’s got big shoes to fill. High expectations. But after what Tre did at Northern Illinois, he’s actually what we needed and were hoping for. He’s been in big games and played big-time football. He’s a bear [5-foot-11, 215 pounds]. He looks good without pads.
“You’d think the cupboard would have been bare for us losing a player like Benny. But we feel good with Tre and A-Mac (Aaron McAllister). You can’t really ask a running back to carry the ball 35 times a game any more. So you have to do it by committee, to some extent.”
Q. The wide receivers corps appears to be almost an embarrassment of riches, with guys like Victor Tucker, Cam Dollar, Tyler Ringwood and Micaleous Elder returning, as well as Rico Arnold coming back from a foot injury that cost him last season. Do you agree?
“Yeah! Nobody left. We’re OK there. We return a bunch of guys who were productive and have played in our system. Now we’ve got to find the next level for them and how we can improve on the successes we had in the throw game. Everybody wants to say, this guy had 1,000 yards or caught 55 balls or whatever, but for us, the wide receiver position is part of the physical aspect of the game.
“Just as important as catching 18 passes in a game is impacting the run game. Can we make a 4-yard (run) play a 7-yard play, or a 7-yard play a 20-yard play, is where we can start. We want to challenge those guys to take it to the next level by being physical and taking the defense to the edge.”
Q. How do you rebuild what was an excellent offensive line that loses three starters?
“Having a guy like (NFL prospect) Cam Clark for your quarterback as a blindside (left) tackle was such a luxury. But in (returning starters) D’Mitri (Emmanuel) at guard and Jaelin (Fisher) at center coming back, we’ve got two guys who can grab the bull by the horns and be real leaders. It’s their room now.
“We have (juco transfer) Ashton Gist here now, and he’s done a phenomenal job in the weight room. Dejan (Rasuo) played a lot of football for us last season. And we’ll see how quickly (Malik) Harkness and (Gage) Welborn can take it to the next level.”
Q. So let’s hear one good Will Healy story from Richmond.
“In 2004, his redshirt season, his first year on the team, we were playing at N.C. State in our first game of the season. Their coach was Chuck Amato, they had the best defense in the country, with Mario Williams, Manny Lawson and John McCargo. Will was our emergency quarterback, third on the depth chart. We were hoping beyond hope he didn’t have to go into a game that season.
“We were taking the field during the pregame warmups. Will was wearing number 10, and had such a baby face, had no idea what was going on around him.
“Some guy in the crowd sees that Will’s a little nervous, and yells: ‘Hey number 10, did your mother sign your permission slip to be on this trip?’
“It was hilarious. I was doubled-over laughing.”
Key Charlotte 49ers dates
Feb. 14: Spring practice starts.
March 21: Green-White spring game, 3 p.m.
Sept. 5: Season opener, at Tennessee.
Sept. 12: Home opener, vs. Norfolk State.
Oct. 3: Conference USA opener, at Florida Atlantic.