To some, it may feel like the UNC football team’s season ended when Noah Burnette’s kick sailed wide left against NC State in double overtime on Saturday. But don’t tell that to Mack Brown.

The Hall of Fame head coach didn’t waste any time in the aftermath of last weekend’s heartbreaker against the Wolfpack, remaining steadfast in his belief that the Tar Heels are not backing their way into the ACC Championship against Clemson.

“We won it outright,” Brown said. “Backing in would’ve been we didn’t win any and somebody else lost. We wanted to win to get in and that’s what we did.”

And when going off pure facts, Brown’s statement is correct: the Tar Heels clinched their second Coastal Division title in school history three weeks ago at Wake Forest, punching its ticket to Charlotte before the Georgia Tech and NC State losses.

Morale was high in Chapel Hill after that night in Winston-Salem. The team was 9-1, its quarterback was seen as a contender for the Heisman Trophy and a narrow but very real path to the College Football Playoff presented itself.

Now, at 9-3, the team is simply playing for what’s in front of it: an ACC championship and a trip to the Orange Bowl for the second time in three years. Brown said the Tar Heels had been playing with fire in multiple games this season, and finally got burned against both the Yellow Jackets and the Wolfpack.

“We’ve come down to a play or two in every game,” he said. “We made them in all the others except Notre Dame. They whipped us good. Every other game’s come down to the last play, and we made the plays before and we haven’t made the plays the past two weeks.”

If UNC fans had been told their team would be competing for a conference championship at the beginning of August, most would’ve likely been enthusiastic. Brown, himself a veteran of almost 40 seasons as a head coach in college football, tried to put things into perspective Saturday night.

“They’re still the champions of the Coastal for the second time in school history,” Brown said. “I’m not gonna sit around and feel bad. I’m not gonna feel embarrassed for nine wins. I’ll give two teams credit that beat us at home at the end, which I’m disappointed in, [and the team’s] disappointed in. But when your team plays as hard as they can play, that’s all you can ask them to do.”

It’s easy to see the Tar Heels are playing hard. But when four- and five-star players begin to stack up in the depth chart, playing hard may not be good enough for some anymore. From a recruiting perspective, Georgia Tech and NC State lag behind Carolina, and both still came out on top in Chapel Hill. 

Clemson, on the other hand, has paced the ACC’s recruiting efforts for years under head coach Dabo Swinney. The Tigers are coming off a rivalry loss of their own and are no longer in the College Football Playoff conversation. Needless to say, the Tar Heels will have Clemson’s full attention.

Will Carolina play hard? Almost certainly. 

Will they win? I’ll get back to you.

 

Featured image via Jeffrey A. Camarati


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