UNC football head coach Mack Brown joined Aaron Keck Monday morning for “Mondays with Mack,” presented by Chapel Hill Tire.
The Tar Heels rebounded from their loss in the season opener with a 59-17 win over Georgia State on Saturday. But Brown isn’t satisfied with the win, and knows his team will have to play better to end a four-game losing streak against Virginia, who visits Chapel Hill this weekend. Here are a few of Brown’s answers on various topics:
On his impressions from the Georgia State game: It’s a much more pleasant Monday than it was a week ago… winning solves everything, and losing is tough. We felt good about the game. We’re approaching it like a loss, and that sounds weird, but we’re correcting things that were not acceptable, just like we did last week. So as much as we can appreciate and build confidence on the good things we did, we’re still being really, really hard on each other with self-evaluation. We felt like we started the game well, then in the second quarter we kind of had a lull on both sides of the ball. Defensively, we had two fourth-down stops. We forced a turnover. We felt like we tackled better. And we played a lot of guys, and our first- and second-team defense gave up very few yards, just over 100. We put a lot of young guys in in the fourth quarter, late third and fourth quarter, so they got to play a lot of snaps. So that’s positive moving forward. Offensively, we struggled some in the second quarter. After the defense stopped a fake punt, we had to kick a field goal. And you should be scoring touchdowns when you get the ball in great field position. And then we had a couple of slow drives to start the second half. And then the third quarter, [we] just blew up, and scored a lot of touchdowns, and moved the ball, and that’s who we want to be. Special teams continues to be good. We blocked a punt for the first time in our three years here. And we stopped the fake punt, which was a real big play in the ballgame. It was a very, very well designed and executed play, and our guys just ran it down with their speed.
On the atmosphere in Kenan Stadium: It was great. The best were the students. The students were there early, they stayed late, they were screaming, they were shouting, and we need the same thing out of the entire stadium this weekend. Everybody needs to come a little earlier. Let’s get in there and make sure the players see as we’re warming up, and get them fired up. Because Virginia’s a good team, and that’s gonna be a huge game for us. We’re definitely gonna need our home-field advantage. I looked it up: we’re 9-4 at home since we’ve been here. One of those four was No. 1 Clemson, a second one was No. 2 Notre Dame, and then we lost to Appalachian State and we lost to Virginia. So, we need to get the Virginia series turned around this weekend.
On what he’s focusing on leading up to the Virginia game: The biggest thing, offensively, is to make 4+ yards on first down. We were a lot better on third downs Saturday night, but we still were inconsistent on first down, especially with the running game. So we’ve got to go back and study why we’re having some bad plays early in the series. And I think that’s probably the biggest thing for the game. We’ve got some injuries, we’ve got some guys banged up since we’ve been here three years. We’re not in great shape to replace them, but we’re in much better shape than we were our first year. We feel like Virginia’s got a good team. Our games with them have come down to the last drive the last two years. And they’ve come out on the better end. So, we’ve got to do a better job.
On his message to the fans: When we first got here, we came up with a little slogan: come early, be loud, stay late and wear blue. And that’s what we need on Saturday night. We need everybody coming early and being ready to play, because the crowd needs to ‘Be The One’ on Saturday night and help us win this game.
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
Chapelboro.com does not charge subscription fees. You can support local journalism and our mission to serve the community. Contribute today – every single dollar matters.
Comments on Chapelboro are moderated according to our Community Guidelines