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.
It was another tough day at the office for Brown and the Tar Heels on Saturday, as Carolina lost 34-24 to Pittsburgh for its third straight defeat. It’s the first time UNC has dropped three straight regular-season games since 2019, Brown’s first year back in charge of the football program.
Here are a few of Brown’s answers on various topics:
On the team’s outlook: We’re protecting the ball well on offense. We’re not taking the ball away on defense. We’ve gotta get more turnovers. We had the one great interception with Kaleb Cost for the long touchdown return on Saturday. Our penalties were really low on Saturday, which was something that we did well in the first three games. We won the kicking game on Saturday, which we did the first three games and then didn’t for the previous two. So we feel like there’s a lot of things that are getting better. We’re still running the ball. Offensive line played better. Those guys have been hurt, they’ve been sick and, and their coach has been out. So we’ve got a lot of good things going. We’ve just gotta figure out ways to win ball games. A few plays at the end of the Duke game. We didn’t make a few plays at the end of this game.
On the thin margins in college football: College football is going to continue to get more like the NFL in my estimation. You look at Saturday — Vanderbilt beats No. 1 Alabama. Yep. Washington lost to Rutgers last week and they beat Michigan. Texas A&M killed Missouri. Miami was down 25 points against Cal and comes back and wins. And then Virginia has an 18-point fourth quarter to win. So many of these games are coming down to the end and you’ve just gotta coach better than ever before. And you’ve gotta help these guys get to those few plays that matter. We were 2-6 on fourth downs and we knew they were gonna score points. They have a really good quarterback, they have good skill people, so we had to go for the fourth downs. But it doesn’t do you any good to go for them if you don’t make them. So we’ve gotta start making those plays, and that’ll be the difference. Red-zone and third and fourth downs were the difference in the ball game on Saturday.
On his message to the fans: Let’s get back on track. Georgia Tech’s really good. They’re running the ball well. They’ve got another great quarterback. We will see two of the best quarterbacks in the country, last week with the Pitt quarterback and this week with Georgia Tech’s. It’s a game where Georgia Tech’s had the advantage over us the last couple of years. So we’ve gotta keep working. That’s the way life is. You can’t handle what happens to you, but you can handle how you respond to it. And what we’ve gotta do is continue to respond, help these guys learn life lessons and go back and win football games.
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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Thanks for posting Mack’s comments!
I have a colonoscopy coming up and was dreading drinking all that bad-tasting stuff!
Now I won’t have to! I’ll just keep reading his comments and it’ll happen!!!!
Thanks for posting Mack’s comments!
I have a colonoscopy coming up and was dreading drinking all that bad-tasting stuff!
Now I won’t have to! I’ll just keep reading his comments and it’ll happen!!!!
This is a little off the subject of the article, but how did Coach Williams fare with Helene? I haven’t heard any reports.