Extra Points: Present Tense

Every day is a bonus for Freddie Kitchens. He's banked 4,215 of them since he looked into the abyss of what doctors said was a 25 percent chance of surviving emergency heart surgery on June 4, 2013.

Kitchens, a former starting quarterback at the University of Alabama, was the quarterbacks coach for the Arizona Cardinals and took the field at the team practice facility that morning for a summer organized team activity. He felt a pop in his chest and a burning sensation. A while later, he felt a cramp in one leg. He tried to power through the workout, but eventually the team medical staff convinced him to retire to the training room for an examination.

Soon after, Kitchens was undergoing eight hours of surgery at a Phoenix hospital for an aortic dissection—a genetic condition leading to a tear in the inner layer of the aorta, allowing blood to spurt through the outside aortic wall. His wife Ginger jumped on a plane from the east coast, not knowing if her husband would be alive when she landed five hours later.

The happy ending was that Kitchens survived the operation performed by Dr. Andrew Goldstein, an authority on the procedure, and was nearly full speed when the Cardinals opened training camp six weeks later.

"The fact is, the worst thing that could have happened to me, missed its opportunity," Kitchens says. "I like to think I was pretty good about living in the moment before that. But that was a wake-up call. You make the most of every day. You never know when your last one is coming. You respect the little things more. It could end any time."

So it's little wonder that during a 25-minute press briefing on Thursday that Kitchens, Carolina's interim head coach for the Wasabi Fenway Bowl, used the phrase a half dozen times "be where your feet are" in talking about the Tar Heels preparing to meet UConn on Dec. 28. Kitchens is the essence of living in the moment and the embodiment of poet Emily Dickinson's opinion that "forever is composed of nows."

Mack Brown out and Bill Belichick in? No matter. Offensive coordinator Chip Lindsey off to Michigan? No matter. The transfer portal open? No matter. A return to the city where the Tar Heels were pummeled in November by Boston College in the New England chill and where the extended forecast is mid-40s temperatures at 11 a.m. next Saturday? No matter still.

"Our players have done a good job staying where our feet are and trying to do a good job each and every day, collectively and individually," Kitchens says. "These guys have done a good job knocking out the distractions and doing that."

Kitchens says that with the departure of Lindsey, the offensive staff is being led by receivers coach Lonnie Galloway. Kitchens, the Tar Heels' tight ends coach for two years, normally works from the press box but will coach from the sideline in Fenway Park. Omarion Hampton is definitely out of the game, having declared for the NFL Draft.

"I'm expecting them to play well, and they expect themselves to play well," Kitchens says. "If not, they should not be out there. They're a good group of kids, they have the ability to stay where their feet are and stay focused. They've done a good job of that."

Kitchens was a freshman quarterback on the 1993 Alabama team that beat Carolina in the Gator Bowl, 24-10 and started for the Crimson Tide for three years from 1995-97, leaving at No. 4 in school career passing yards. He coached college football for seven years before joining the NFL, working for Dallas, Arizona, Cleveland and the New York Giants, with one year as head coach of the Browns in 2019.

When his boss Joe Judge was fired as the Giants' head coach after the 2021 season, Kitchens was looking for work. With his daughters in college at Baylor and South Carolina, Kitchens took the opportunity in 2022 to find a post in Columbia as an offensive analyst on Shane Beamer's Gamecock staff. He enjoyed the college experience and was quick to accept Brown's overtures in early 2023 to come to Chapel Hill and replace John Lilly.

"I got into this business because some of the biggest impacts on my life were college football coaches," he says. "I kind of lost track of that a little bit in the NFL. I've enjoyed it so much. If I can impact a kid at 18 to 22 in a positive manner, it's worth it, doing for them the same as other people did for me."

Those connections are played out daily in the tight ends meeting room and on Wednesday nights during the season when Kitchens treats his group to dinner out. This week it was a gang of nine at Osteria Georgi, an upscale Italian restaurant near the Carolina campus where young men accustomed to wolfing down pepperoni pizza were met with a menu that ranged from braised duck to gnocchi to things they couldn't pronounce.

"That's where Coach Kitchens really shines, just being with the guys, cutting up and having fun," says senior tight end John Copenhaver. "He's big on relationships, on talking ball but talking about life. It's a blast when we go out together. That dinner this week was our last hurrah with this group."

Belichick said at his opening press conference Dec. 12 that Kitchens would be a part of his new staff. Kitchens in his NFL travels has worked for at least two head coaches with close Belichick ties—Bill Parcells at Dallas in 2006 and Judge at New York in 2021. Both understand one another as being no-nonsense "ball coaches"—the phrase Kitchens used Thursday in saying why he was excited about new era of the program.

"I love the fact that Coach Belichick wanted to come to Carolina," Kitchens says. "I love Carolina, and I want what's best for Carolina, and I know right now at this moment in time, Coach Belichick is best for Carolina."

Kitchens' specific role on the new staff is to be determined (he's coached running backs, quarterbacks and tight ends over a quarter of a century) but selling the Belichick vision and the campus and culture at Carolina will come easy.

"For any potential student-athlete at the University of North Carolina, it would be asinine for them to not to consider and want to come to the University of North Carolina," Kitchens says. "'What are you looking for?' is what I would ask. If you're interested in preparation to get you ready to play at the next level, if that's a goal of yours, we should be at the top of anyone's list."

Kitchens has 15 years of competing against the New England Patriots juggernaut that Belichick authored from 2000-23, winning six Super Bowls. There were some bright spots, the Cardinals winning by two points in Foxborough in the second game of the 2012 season. And some nightmares, those Cardinals being pounded by the Patriots 47-7 in the New England snow in the next to last game of the 2008 season. That loss turned out to be the catalyst to the Cardinals turning their season around and making a run to the Super Bowl, where they lost to Pittsburgh.

"The thing I can say about Coach Belichick teams is that they were always disciplined, always prepared and always played hard," Kitchens says. "If you can get those three things, you've got it whipped most of the time. You could always tell the way his teams paid attention to detail and never beat themselves."

That's certainly the blueprint for the coming era of Tar Heel football. But for the moment, Belichick and general manager Michael Lombardi are working the Tar Heel roster through the transfer portal and high school recruiting and Kitchens is running the team. It's all good, particularly when the alternative from 11 years ago is always in the back of Freddie Kitchens' mind.

Chapel Hill writer Lee Pace (Carolina '79) has been writing about Tar Heel football under the "Extra Points" banner since 1990 and reporting from the sidelines on radio broadcasts since 2004. Write him at leepace7@gmail.com and follow him @LeePaceTweet.

Players Mentioned

John Copenhaver

Omarion Hampton

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