Through seven games, it seems like the 2022 Tar Heels are the exact opposite of the 2021 team. Carolina has gutted out not one, not two, not three, but four close road games already. This comes after UNC dropped three heartbreakers on the road last season and fell flat in the others. The Tar Heels’ four road wins are the program’s most since the 2016 season.
Head coach Mack Brown put Carolina’s strong start in perspective after the thrilling win Saturday night.
“I’m proud of our guys,” Brown said. “They’re resilient. We’ve had four road wins this year, and all four of them, at some point, we were in trouble and stepped up and played well enough in the fourth quarter to win. Good teams win on the road and good teams win close games, and we’ve been able to do that this year. The last couple of years, even as good as we were with the Orange Bowl team, we lost a couple of close games. So that’s very, very impressive to me for the coaches and for the players.”
Junior wide receiver Josh Downs, who finished with nine catches for 126 yards Saturday and was a freshman on that 2020 Orange Bowl team, said the Tar Heels are entering the bye week in the best form they’ve been in all season.
“In my opinion, these last two wins are our best wins to me,” he said. “To go down there to Miami and come out with that win, it was incredible. It was a similar feeling to today. Everybody in the locker room was ecstatic. We’re just growing together. Last year, we definitely struggled on the road a lot, and it showed. This year, we’ve come together in adversity and we don’t let the home team get a surge. We just win the game.”
Junior linebacker Cedric Gray made six tackles Saturday against the Blue Devils. Another veteran of last year’s team, Gray said it’s the off-the-field preparation that is setting this year’s Tar Heels apart.
“I think our whole attitude in the team has changed from last year to this year,” Gray said. “This team is a lot more resilient. This team has a lot more leaders on it. This team just gives a lot, and is way more prepared than I feel like the team was last year.”
Gray’s comments echo those of his head coach so far this season. Mack Brown has time and again noted how this season’s team consistently has practiced harder than last season’s. Brown is also noticeably more complimentary of the 2022 Tar Heels. Equaling last season’s win total in mid-October may have something to do with that, but it’s a promising trend for Carolina fans hoping for another ACC Championship appearance in the last year of division play.
UNC’s five remaining post-bye week opponents, including three who beat the Tar Heels last season, may have something to say about that. But Brown said Carolina, who broke into the AP Top 25 Sunday for the first time all season, still hasn’t reached its true potential.
“They’re playing really hard, to the standard I want now,” Brown said. “We didn’t at the [beginning] of the year all the time. They’re playing with confidence. They didn’t get bad body language and give up. But we’ve still got so many things we can fix, and we can play so much better. And that’s the fun part of this team. There’s an upside here that we haven’t even scratched.”
Featured image via The Daily Tar Heel/Kennedy Cox
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