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.
The Tar Heels fell flat in Orlando in Week 4, losing 34-9 to fall to 2-2 on the season. After a bye week, Carolina will be back in action this Saturday when it hosts Clemson at Kenan Stadium. The Tigers are mired in troubles of their own, having dropped three of their first four games.
Here are a few of Lombardi’s answers on various topics:
On what the team worked on during the bye week: I think a lot of it is just working on improvement with our team, our young players, getting everybody back to fundamentals, techniques, all those things that you need to continue to work on when you’re trying to build a program. It was good. We had good practices. It was a lot of energy. I think obviously the disappointment of Central Florida has resonated with our players.
I think we’re a program that needs to get better at every single area. And one of the things we have to get better at is our young players, we’ve gotta continue to develop them and try to get them involved more in our team. And the only way you could do that is to practice. We need to string really good practices together. We have one good practice and then a bad one, but we need to put five or six of them in a row to really start building something.
On the team getting healthier, specifically QB Gio Lopez: We had a little bit of the flu bug going around before Central Florida, but I think Gio’s gonna be day-to-day. Max [Johnson] has done a good job of stepping in for him. We just take it one day at a time. I think it’s always hard to predict this, but when you’re looking at our program, I think ultimately it’s just about what we’ve gotta do today to get better. And I think that’s where everybody’s focus is.
On Clemson: Clemson’s an experienced team. Obviously they were very disappointed in the way they played since they played in the opening game against LSU. They played LSU extremely tough and then the next week against Troy, they weren’t as sharp. They ended up winning the second half pretty well and got that win and then they went to Georgia Tech and lost a close game there. And then Syracuse really came into Clemson and dominated the game until Syracuse’s quarterback suffered an Achilles tendon injury, which kept the game a little bit tighter. But I think Clemson will get back to that LSU style of play that they had. They were more aggressive, more physical and we expect a tough battle with them. I mean, look, they’re a good program. They’ve been a sustained program for a long time and Cade Klubnik, their quarterback, has been a very good player and they’ve got some good skills, so it’ll be a good challenge for our team to go against them.
On the football fandom in Chapel Hill: I think the one thing that’s been proven is people want good football here. I think you could see it from our walk from the Old Well to here. And I think there’s enthusiasm about our program. I think one thing I would say is it’s gonna take us some time to get this program to where we want it to be. There’s no overnight fixes. And I think ultimately when you look at where we are with our program and where we need to go, we’ve got a lot of work to do and we love it. We’re gonna embrace the hard work and build this team moving forward. But what we really are trying to accomplish is sustainable success. And I think that takes some time. We’ve gotta lay a good foundation and we all have to get better. I’ve gotta get better at my job. Coach Belichick has talked about this quite often. When you’re building a program like we did in Cleveland, like he did in New England, you’re gonna have some bumps in the road along the way, but we’re gonna fight through them and we’re gonna build something that is sustainable for many years to come.
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 Associated Press/John Raoux
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