When former North Carolina offensive coordinator Chip Lindsey was offered Michigan’s offensive coordinator job, he sought advice from Mack Brown, his head coach at UNC.

Lindsey, 50, is expected to be named Michigan’s new offensive coordinator. He is a 26-year coaching veteran who spent the last two seasons with the Tar Heels as coordinator and quarterbacks coach. In Ann Arbor, he will be tasked with shaping the Michigan offense and will work with Bryce Underwood, the incoming freshman quarterback and No. 1 overall recruit who officially signed with Michigan last Wednesday.

He replaces Kirk Campbell, the offensive coordinator and quarterbacks coach, fired after one season last week by head coach Sherrone Moore, who said he wanted to hire someone who will develop a balanced offense.

“Chip’s really excited about Michigan,” Brown told The Detroit News on Wednesday. “And I told him he should be, because it’s Michigan. It’s one of the bluebloods.

“I think he’s just ready to win at the highest level, so he’s really excited. He had some other opportunities, too. He was a hot commodity.”

Brown said Lindsey asked his opinion of the Michigan job. The Wolverines struggled this season offensive and started three quarterbacks. They were 128th in total offense (294.3) and 112th in scoring (22.3). North Carolina ranked 37th in total offense this season, averaging 423.4 yards, and 35th in scoring, averaging 32.3 points in its second season under Lindsey. In 2023, Lindsey coached quarterback Drake Maye, the No. 3 overall player taken in the 2024 NFL Draft.

“I said, when you can coach at a Texas and a Michigan, you go,” Brown said. “He wanted to go. He was excited about going. And he grew up in Alabama, so he knew the Alabama-Auburn rivalry. He went to Alabama so, so he’s seen big-time football, and of course, being at Auburn and competing in that game, he understands what the Michigan-Ohio State game’s like, too.”

Lindsey has coached quarterbacks throughout his career. He was offensive coordinator/quarterbacks coach at Southern Miss (2014-2015), Arizona State (2016), Auburn (2017-2018), then became head coach at Troy (2019-2021). He was offensive coordinator/quarterbacks coach at UCF in 2022 and then at UNC the last two years.

Brown said when he was looking for a coordinator before the 2023 season, he solicited help from Maye, because he wanted to know what his quarterback wanted in a coach as he entered his final year of college football.

“And he said, ‘I want somebody to develop me. I want to win all the games here but also want somebody to develop me for the NFL,’” Brown said. “So when I started looking, I actually had Drake involved with the hiring process, and he would talk to the guys after I would talk to them. We wouldn’t talk together, because I didn’t think that was fair, and then we would get up and I would say, ‘What’d you see? What’d you hear?’ and it was amazing that we were exactly on the same page.

“What we found was an older guy in Chip that was a high school coach at one time and very successful. He ran the Air Raid offense in high school, and that’s what we were running, but we wanted to run the ball better, and Chip had called plays and won games at Arizona State. He called plays and won games at Auburn, so he’d been under pressure in major conferences. He’d been a head coach at Troy, so he had accomplished so much, and he had two guys that he had coached that were current NFL quarterbacks, so he fit what we needed perfectly, and (current Florida State offensive coordinator) Gus Malzahn does a really good job of running the ball, and Chip and Gus kind of grew up together because he was Gus’ offensive coordinator at Auburn and at Central Florida.”

Brown and Maye found together a coordinator who Brown describes as “humble and confident.”

“He’s been around a long time and was very successful in high school,” Brown said. “He came up the hard way. He wasn’t that hot coordinator at 24 that got all the jobs. He’s worked really hard.”

Lindsey has coached Maye and Jarrett Stidham, a fourth-round NFL selection from Auburn, among others, and Brown anticipates he will be a perfect fit coaching Underwood, the star quarterback from Belleville who flipped from LSU to Michigan late last month.

“Drake was highly publicized, and Drake was the Freshman of the Year before Chip got (to North Carolina), so Chip can handle the celebrity, he can handle the confidence,” Brown said. “Also, Drake just really bought into him and trusted him, and that was something that really needed to happen for us. He was able to tweak the offense around Drake with what we were doing but also trying to take some pressure off Drake where he wouldn’t have to run so much.

“I think the fact that Bryce is going to see that he’s got two in the NFL already, and he just put a guy in there that’s a third pick, that’s really a plus for Bryce, knowing that he can teach guys to get to the next level.”

Brown said Lindsey has benefited from the experience of being a head coach and is well-versed in how the individual position groups are run. He stepped in during the recent season to coach the offensive line when the UNC coach was out with illness.

“He does know all the positions, and he would actually walk around during practice some and advise guys what to do,” Brown said. “He does have a great look at the entire offense.”

Lindsey also knows how to develop the run game, Brown said, and mentioned UNC running back Omarion Hampton, who rushed for 1,660 yards and 15 touchdowns this season and 1,504 yards and 15 touchdowns last season.

His biggest strength, Brown said, is the ability to be a strong leader on offense and engage all his position coaches.

“We had an older staff and very experienced coaches in our offensive room,” Brown said. “In fact, two of them were head coaches at one time, and he controlled the room. He does a great job of getting everybody’s input. He won’t come in and try to take over and say, ‘This is what we’re doing. Nobody else has any input.’ He’s really good at getting everybody’s opinion and him being strong enough to be the boss, after he gets their input, making sure it all works together.”