UNC football head coach Mack Brown joined Aaron Keck this morning for “Mondays with Mack,” presented by Chapel Hill Tire.
Brown and the No. 20 Tar Heels will begin their highly-anticipated 2023 season with the Duke’s Mayo Classic in Charlotte against South Carolina on Saturday night. The game will be broadcast nationally on ABC and is the featured matchup on ESPN’s College GameDay. In short, the national spotlight is on the Tar Heels.
Here are a few of Brown’s answers on various topics:
On if the buildup to this season feels similar or different to other seasons: It’s probably both. It’s similar in that you get excited and it’s like the opening of anything new. You’ve waited an entire year and worked an entire year to get started. And there’s always some anxiety simply because you’ve never seen this team play and you’ve worked against yourselves for the entire spring and then preseason. So if you’re running the ball well on offense, you’re mad at your defense and if you’re stopping the run on defense, you’re mad at your offense. So it’s just hard to figure out who you are until you go play against someone else. Most people in the country will be playing somebody that they’ll beat on Saturday without any question. They won’t have to worry about their game plans and they’ll just go out and get started and have some fun. We don’t have that luxury. We have a great team to open the season. In fact, a very difficult schedule in those first four games before we have an open date. We don’t have time to ease our way in. We’ve gotta be on our top game on Saturday night.
On the Tez Walker eligibility situation: Tez is really struggling. He had a tough time yesterday in practice. You make a decision to come home for your grandmother and get close to home. You make a decision to leave Kent State because your head coach leaves, your offensive coordinator leaves, your receiver coach leaves, and most of your team leaves, and then you feel like you’re eligible and then you’re not. It puts a tremendous amount of mental pressure on him. We haven’t heard anything. We’re still waiting. There’s a little bit more of the process that needs to be done. Hopefully we’ll hear something in the next couple of days and we can finalize the process and he’ll be eligible to play on Saturday night.
On South Carolina and being featured on College GameDay: The biggest challenge will be their quarterback. He is really, really good. And like the Oregon game, we’ve got two of the best quarterbacks in the country: Spencer Rattler and Drake Maye. That’s one of the main reasons that we’re on ABC prime time. It’s a tremendous opportunity to showcase both programs, because when you’ve got the best quarterbacks, everybody wants to watch. Of the 130-something programs that are out there that could have been on GameDay this week, we were chosen. And I’m really, really proud of that and excited about that. That just shows you where our program is today. I think the biggest challenge is stopping [Rattler] because like Drake, when he gets hot he can run up and down the field. That’s why they were so good at the end of the year. They beat a Tennessee team that was hot. They beat a Clemson team that won our league and beat us and then came down to the end of the game with Notre Dame. They really finished the season strong.
We’ve told the guys, everybody that watches college football is gonna watch GameDay on Saturday morning, and then they’re gonna watch our game. So you only get one time to have a first impression for this season. And a lot of people will make decisions on Saturday night, whether we think that we’re gonna have a good year or not.
On his message to the fans attending in Charlotte or watching from home: I really want to encourage all of our fans that are going down to the game, even if you’re not going to the game or you don’t have tickets, go down and support the University of North Carolina football program at GameDay, because that’s a chance for everybody in the country to see how passionate our fans are.
Get in your Carolina Blue on Saturday morning and you can attend GameDay at home. Just be there and have your mind and your body getting ready to go. And be proud of your program. Be proud of these young guys. Get you a good meal. Get ready to play on Saturday night and scream as loud as you can. We need to hear you in the stadium from your homes.
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 Associated Press/Jeff Siner
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