Art Chansky’s Sports Notebook is presented by The Casual Pint. YOUR place for delicious pub food paired with local beer. Choose among 35 rotating taps and 200+ beers in the cooler.
Carolina has good and bad to tell quarterback recruits.
Let’s start with the bad sacks allowed against “NFL” quarterbacks. In four previous seasons, the Tar Heels have finished 12th, last, 13th and 9th in the ACC, giving up an average of 40 sacks and losing 229 yards per season.
Despite an air raid offense run by a current NFL quarterback and perhaps the first pick in the next NFL draft, Carolina has left Sam Howell and Drake Maye too vulnerable. And Mack Brown doesn’t want to see any more of it.
“We’ve had too many sacks here for four years,” Brown said sharply this week, “and I’ve told Chip Lindsey, Freddie Kitchens and Larry Porter, I’m not going through another season with a bunch of sacks.”
He left out offensive line coach Randy Clements, who may be the most important coach in protecting Maye in the pocket.
Brown says that having a great quarterback who gets the ball out of his hands is only part of it. The Tar Heels need to run the ball better to keep the defensive line from teeing off.
“And if we run better, it’ll help, Brown said, “but I’m not gonna spend another year with a bunch of sacks. It’s been a goal for four and a half years, a goal in the spring, and then the other day in the scrimmage, we still had too many, so it’s gotta get fixed.”
Lindsey told the media last Friday about the goal of going eight deep on the offensive line and that the Heels aren’t there yet due to inconsistency.
Brown added that the interior line is playing better right now than the other positions but that his program has been inconsistent in the offensive line since he returned, rotating mostly five or six every year.
“You don’t shut the season down if you don’t have eight,” he said, “you’d like to have eight and, more than anything else, you lose three or four of these for next year.”
Brown says it is as important to play for the future, grooming guys for 2024. He likes the progress of young o-linemen like Treyvon Green and Diego Pounds, but that good practices are followed by inconsistency.
The good thing is that Carolina has had the two NFL guys, and both have thrown for a ton of yardage each season. So whether it’s in recruiting freshmen or going to the transfer portal, there is a legacy to uphold.
And it doesn’t hurt that the rumors, if true, say that Maye got more than a million NIL dollars after he announced he would not take even more money to go to the SEC or Big Ten.
Featured image via Associated Press/Jacob Kupferman
Chapelboro.com does not charge subscription fees, and you can directly support our efforts in local journalism here. Want more of what you see on Chapelboro? Let us bring free local news and community information to you by signing up for our biweekly newsletter.
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Subscribe: RSS
Protect The Man! I agree 100 percent!
Mack says they must do a better job with pass protection. Go back the last 3 years and see him saying the same thing. And we must cut down on mistakes and turnovers and creat more turnovers. He’s says the same thing for years. But it never happens. Who is the only constant for the past 5 years? In Jeopardy lingo: Who is Mack Brown?