UNC football general manager Michael Lombardi joined 97.9 The Hill’s Aaron Keck this morning for “The Monday Morning Huddle,” presented by Chapel Hill Tire.
It was another heartbreaking loss for Carolina Saturday, as the Tar Heels came inches from an upset against No. 16 Virginia put fell short, 17-16 in overtime. Now, UNC turns its attention to a rare road trip up to Syracuse Friday, where the Tar Heels have not played since 2018.
Here are a few of Lombardi’s answers on various topics:
On the loss to Virginia: You have to always look at games and understand why you win and understand why you lose. And we just have to stop beating ourselves. I think ultimately that’s been Coach Belichick’s mantra his entire career. You have to avoid losing before you can win. And when you turn the ball over as we did, miss a field goal as we did, those are the things that hurt you. It’s never just one play, it’s a series of things that happened during the game, whether it’s in the first quarter or the fourth. So it was disappointing. I think we have to understand how to learn how to win and close games out. It doesn’t matter if you’re an inch short or five inches short, you’ve gotta figure out a way to win the game.
On what he was pleased with in the game: I think what continues to impress me about our football team is the resilience in the game. We had a bad pass interference call. We fought back from that. We created a turnover in the red zone after that. We stopped them on fourth down. Early in the year when something went wrong, we didn’t fight back. You have to be able to fight through adversity. And I think our team has done a really good job of fighting through adversity, focusing. It hasn’t been the results that we wanted, but I think they believe in the process, which is really what matters the most: understanding that it’s a process to win games.
On the headlines speculating on Belichick’s future at UNC: It’s just noise. And you could see our team understands it was just noise. Every player that has spoken up has talked about the energy in the locker room, talked about the camaraderie in the locker room, and certainly in a transitional year in terms of some players who have been here before and some that are new. There’s always gonna be somebody who wants to play more. That’s a healthy environment within a football team. But it’s never affected our locker room, nor has it affected our coaches. Focus on what it takes to win. It’s just a lot of noise.
On Friday’s game at Syracuse: Syracuse lost their starting quarterback earlier in the season. They’re struggling. They played 14 freshmen last week against Georgia Tech. It didn’t go as well as they’d hoped, but I’m sure playing at home in their dome, loud stadium on a Friday night, Halloween, I think it’ll be a great atmosphere. It’ll be a great situation for our players to face. I think that’s really important to be able to show our mental toughness, to show our physical toughness and be able to go out there and compete
Listen below for the full conversation with Michael Lombardi, and tune in to hear the segment live on Monday mornings each game week!
Featured image via Chapel Hill Media Group/Chance Bragg
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