Throughout it all – the blown leads, the losses as a double-digit favorite, the growing fan frustration – Mack Brown had always been able to hang his hat on one thing: he could beat Duke. Brown hadn’t lost to the Blue Devils since 1989, when old nemesis Steve Spurrier famously took a picture in front of the Kenan Stadium scoreboard. It read Duke 41, UNC 0.
That season ended with Carolina sporting a 1-10 record for the second consecutive year. To this day, Brown admits he thought he would be fired.
Now, for the first time since that infamous day in UNC lore, Brown has lost the Victory Bell to his rivals from down the road. Saturday’s 21-20 loss saw his Tar Heels blow a 20-point lead in the third quarter. To the fans who stuck with the program after the disastrous defeat to James Madison, this may be an even stronger test of faith.
And yet, Brown remained defiant after the game: the head coaching job is his until someone tells him it isn’t.
“Everybody in the country that loses a football game has noise,” he said. “So I don’t worry about the noise.”
The Tar Heel players did their best to minimize the impact of the loss, damaging as it may be to fan morale. After all, the last season in which Duke won this game saw Carolina limp to a 2-9 finish and clean out its coaching staff. Quarterback Jacolby Criswell remained levelheaded, simply chalking the loss up to one of those days at the office.
“That’s football, you know?” Criswell said. “You see a lot of games like that. It just happened to happen to us today. And you just have to find a way, dig deep and move forward. There’s gonna be drives where they don’t go your way, and you really have to look into yourself and get it done.”
“We’re not falling apart,” said defensive lineman Jahvaree Ritzie after the defense fell apart in the second half. “We’re nowhere near down. It’s a loss. Everyone loses at some point. So we’ve just gotta come back together and win.”
Whether Criswell and Ritzie’s postgame comments can be attributed to simple numbness over the defeat or a carefully crafted media spin is up for debate. Regardless, Ritzie is technically correct: the Duke game is just one loss. But it’s the type of loss that can haunt a team for the remainder of the fall. After all, one doesn’t simply just forget having to weave through rival fans as they storm the field on you. It happened last season when Carolina visited Georgia Tech, and it happened again on Saturday night in Durham.
“I don’t like them, but they won,” Criswell said. “They deserve it. You give props where props are due. They did what they had to do to get a win. But I have one more year left. You know the rest.”
Criswell is likely not the only Chapel Hill resident already looking forward to next year. But what that year will look like is unclear. If there is anything that could possibly lead to hard questions being asked in the Kenan Football Center, it’s a loss to Duke. You’re simply not supposed to lose to a school that occupies its own special line in your fight song.
Or look at it this way: perhaps Saturday’s defeat is the last piece of the emperor’s clothes to fall unceremoniously away.
Featured image via UNC Athletic Communications/Anthony Sorbellini
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Criswell and Ritzie will very likely be grandpa’s by the time “Hall Of Fame” Mack retires, as he certainly won’t be fired. He’s never been a good coach (as Texas fans found out), but he’s recruited like a “Hall Of Famer,” which masked his inability to develop players and make smart game decisions. But he’s a Tarheel and we don’t fire our fellow man! Fedora wasn’t an “insider” and couldn’t (or wouldn’t) recruit well and was never very popular and had to go. Mack, on the other hand, is loved by all because he says the right things and he won (one) national championship and (only) two conference championships, although he’s never won any of value at UNC, at least not this time around.
And if Mack can be in the Hall Of Fame for coaching, I can be in the Hall Of Fame for poetry:
Mack has something on the powers that be at UNC, so he’s here to stay with 5 million dollars pay. Next up is Pitt, and we’ll watch him spit. His coaching is bad, but he writes on his pad. The players get the blame ‘cause Mack’s in the Hall Of Fame. So pull hard for the team, but things are worse than the seem, and while I never cuss I’m thinking about starting as Mack is driving the bus and is probably______________!