UNC football head coach Mack Brown joined Aaron Keck this morning for “Mondays with Mack,” presented by Chapel Hill Tire.
The Tar Heels bounced back from their poor performance against Georgia Tech with a 38-7 rout over rival Duke, their third straight win over the Blue Devils. The defense played its best football of the season, but Brown knows his team will have to sustain its level of play in order to avoid another upset loss this weekend against Florida State.
Here are a few of Brown’s answers on various topics:
On his impressions from the Duke game: I’m really excited. I’m still amazed by our students. They were there at 8:00 in the morning trying to get in, and they’ve just made such a difference in our games, and our players enjoy them, and the interaction. They’re loud, and they seem to be having fun. So that’s something that has been really enjoyable to watch. As far as our team, our defense played by far the best they’ve played, probably since we’ve been here. They scored on defense with the fumble recovery by Trey Morrison, another tremendous interception by Cam Kelly. And [Kelly] did such a great job throughout the game. But we put pressure on them in the first half to a point that they really had to change their quarterback throwing points and some other things in the second half, because they had trouble protecting. Offensively, it was a big play, bad play day. Duke crowded the line of scrimmage and blitzed a lot. And it hurt us, we had negative plays, we had too many sacks. But at the same time we had big plays for touchdowns.
On the defense’s improvement: There’s a lot of young players on defense that are just growing up, and they’re getting better. And now their question mark this week will be: are they going to be mature enough to go back out and try to build off of a really good performance, and get better? Or are we going to stand around? Because we did against Florida State last year, and they ran it right down our throat.
On Florida State: They’re very talented. They just beat Syracuse this last weekend to get back on the right track. They played really well against Notre Dame the week before we played them last year. And like I said, they had like 261 yards rushing against us. They’ve got 10 of those 11 starters back. They’re leading the league in sacks and tackles for loss, and none of those are a good combination for us right now. So we’ll have our hands full.
On his message to the fans: We want everybody there early. Let’s get in early, let’s make a difference on Saturday. We’re a team that’s getting better. We got off track early, but we’re getting back on track. And we’ve got two wonderful games here. We just had a great game against our rival. Now we’ve got two wonderful games with traditional powerhouses: Florida State and Miami at home. Doesn’t get any better than that for the next two weeks before we take a break and go to Notre Dame. So, come on out, fans, and let’s enjoy it. These guys are playing hard for you at home with 11 wins and only the four losses… Please be there early. Please be loud. And let’s work hard to get a win this weekend.
Listen below for the full conversation between Mack Brown and Aaron Keck, and tune in to hear the segment live on Monday mornings each game week!
Featured image via 247 Sports
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