UNC football head coach Mack Brown joined 97.9 The Hill’s Aaron Keck this morning for “Mondays with Mack,” presented by Chapel Hill Tire.
Brown and the Tar Heels notched their third straight win with a 31-24 victory against Wake Forest on Saturday night. In the process, Carolina also clinched bowl eligibility for the sixth straight season in Brown’s second tenure with the program. Up next for UNC is its final true road test of the season, a visit to Boston College this Saturday.
Here are a few of Brown’s answers on various topics:
On what has surprised him this season: You never think about or can expect injuries. That is something to be on your third quarterback in the third week of the season and to have all your offensive linemen down that are all new anyway. To lose your offensive line coach for a couple of weeks, to lose your best player on defense. Those are all things that take a hit. The James Madison game was just unanswerable, and then the guys started working their way back and getting a little bit more confident. And then you lose Tylee, a 23-year-old on your team that you just watched go downhill in a three-week period after being with him for two-and-a-half years. And then to see the guys come back and fight in his honor and play with more confidence and play with pride is something that a lot of teams and staffs couldn’t do. So I’m, I’m really, really proud of the resilience that these guys have shown and the way that they keep fighting.
On Tylee Craft’s mother, September, being at the Wake Forest game: She came back for the first time [since Tylee’s death]. And for all you parents who have lost a child, I can’t even imagine. God bless you. It’s something that none of us can say, “We know how you feel.” Because we don’t. Nobody wants to do that. And she’s tough. She’s a police officer in Sumter, South Carolina. She’s a single mom. She was up here about every day for two-and-a-half years watching him and trying to have a life, but trying to help him through his sickness, and [be a] really, really strong, wonderful mom up until the end. We thought it was wonderful to bring her back, have her in the locker room. It’s the first time she had seen Ty’s locker since he had passed, and it was a wonderful moment. She told the team, “Better go win those last two games and that bowl game.” So she was tough on them. It was good to see her face and make sure that she’s okay, even though I know she’ll be hurting the rest of her life.
Worth a listen 🎙️ #CarolinaFootball 🏈 #UNCommon pic.twitter.com/r9xhKUdtn3
— Carolina Football (@UNCFootball) November 17, 2024
On Boston College: Bill O’Brien’s done an outstanding job at Boston College. He’s been a head coach in the pros. He’s been a head coach at Penn State. He’s been around a long time and he has great game plans and they’re playing really, really physical football. They’re running the ball. They just had a quarterback change last week and they had a chance to beat SMU down to the end at SMU. So we’ll have our hands full. This will be a game where both teams are gonna try to run the ball and get some play action out of it, and the kicking game’s gonna matter. And as always, scoring touchdowns in the red zone and taking care of the ball’s gonna matter as well. So this will be an even game down to the end and it’ll be a really good test for us.
On his message to the fans: If you can get there, come and wear your Carolina Blue and help us. And if you can’t get there, then put on your Carolina Blue on Saturday morning. It’s an early game at noon, and get somewhere where you can get a bunch of friends around and start screaming and shouting where we can hear you in Boston.
Listen below for the full conversation with Mack Brown, and tune in to hear the segment live on Monday mornings each game week!
Featured image via Associated Press/Chris Seward
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