UNC football coach Mack Brown joined Ron Stutts this morning for “Mondays with Mack,” presented by Chapel Hill Tire. Read his entire interview below:
Coach Mack Brown is on the line and Coach after a disastrous first half the Tar Heels showed a lot of character, I thought, in the second half down at Florida State to come back and make it a game. Unfortunately, Carolina just ran out of time.
Yeah, I think we probably didn’t handle our own success as well as we needed before the half, and then allowed them to take five plays and go down and score very easily because we have a young, inexperienced, secondary, and they were looking into the backfield and looking at the quarterback instead of staying with their guy in man coverage.
Coaches did a great job of keeping their composure at halftime and coming back. And I’m really, really disappointed that we didn’t win the game because we had our opportunities there right at the end. So I think we probably felt a little too good about ourselves and let Florida State get excited, but we lost the first half and some of the second half, and we just didn’t win the game.
So a lot to learn from. I said, when I came back in coaching, I’m not going to get depressed over losses. We’re still way ahead of where we thought we’d be at this time. And we got to go back to work and we weren’t the fifth best team in the country. We were fortunate that people thought we were, but you are how you play. We didn’t play well enough to be that. So I got to go back to work and plugged it at the NC State game this weekend.
Coach after the game, I said on Saturday night that those guys who couldn’t catch the passes on that concluding Carolina drive are kicking themselves hard enough. And we don’t need anyone else to be critical of them. I know it hurt them that they didn’t, weren’t able to close the deal as they had before.
Right, and that’s exactly right. They gripe at their kids and they’re going to gripe at a football team. Even if you win, we’ve had people griping, we’re 3-0 so those people are going to gripe and that’s okay, that’s their personalities. It’s a free country. And they get to do that.
My job is to help these young guys learn from the mistakes that they made, learn from feeling a little too good about themselves. There’s a fine line between confidence and they weren’t complacent, but they didn’t have quite the edge to start the game that they should have. And offensively, we played so well against Virginia Tech. I’ve seen it for many years. You’re just probably not going to come back and be as sharp the next week until you get to the level of talent that Clemson’s got.
So we’ve got to go back and go to work, try to improve all the things that we didn’t do well this weekend and not listened to all the talk of those that are negative. Cause they’re going to be, they’ll be negative if it, when I mean, that’s just who those guys are. So bless their hearts. They’re not very happy, but that’s okay.
True Carolina blue fans are gonna stick with you all along. And this team is certainly one that you just have to love. I mean, I feel that way about them. These guys just show such spirit and you know, they’re exciting to watch. There was much hype coming into the game, number five of the country and all that kind of stuff. And I confess it. You might call me guilty of doing some of that as well. And Tar Heel fans are so excited to have our team back in the national discussion.
How do you get your team back up after there’s a disappointment on Saturday and get them ready for the next one?
Ron, they want to do well. I thought our response Saturday night was a lot like our response after we beat South Carolina and Miami last year, we were feeling a little bit too good about ourselves. We didn’t go play well at Wake Forest and then we didn’t play well against Appalachian State. And then we kind of figured out who we were and we went back to work.
We didn’t play great on defense against Virginia Tech. So we knew that but there were really signs of a good defense again on Saturday night and the second half. And that’s a real positive we can take into this week’s game. We know we can be good on offense. We’re not good enough to just roll a ball out there and think it’s going to happen for us. And we gave Florida State 14 points with the interception for the touchdown and the block punt to start the game.
So we’re not good enough to do those things. I’m like North Carolina fans, I’m excited that we’re getting attention. We’ve got to learn how to handle it and learn how to use it. In fact, this is the first time in 27 years that both NC state and Carolina have been ranked at the same time for this game, which is really crazy. It’s hard to believe.
Yeah, really. And that’s their stretch of ACC games coming up now, very important to win these starting with the Wolfpack on Saturday. Of course you’ll have some fans in the stands. And what can you tell us about NC State?
Well, well, first we’ve got a month of rivalry games. This is so unusual and so cool, but we’ve got NC State at mid-season instead of the end of the year. Then we go to Virginia next week, which is a rivalry game. We’ve got at Duke the next week, which is a rivalry game and Wake Forest coming in here in four weeks, which is a rivalry game. So a lot of emotional will be spent over the next four weeks and we’ll find out a lot more about ourselves and can we play a hard with emotion each week.
NC State’s not near the team they were last year. We’ve probably gotten too much publicity with our ranking and they haven’t gotten enough. They’re tough on defense. They can run. They’ve got two new coordinators in Tony Gibson for their defense and Tim Beck with their offense. And they’re doing a tremendous job with both.
They can line up, run the ball. They’re very physical in their offensive line. And I’m sure they’ll try to do that to us, but defensively where they’re playing well, they’ve had three goal-line stands. They blocked a couple of punts, which is not good for us after having two blocked in one night. But they’re really, really good team and it should be a great game on Saturday.
As you get ready for the Wolfpack on Saturday, what are the particular points of emphasis for your team in practice?
I think eliminate penalties because we did a better job on Saturday night of eliminating penalties, but we still had too many and we’ve got to continue to try to rush the passer and force turnovers on defense. We only had one turnover forced on Saturday night, and it was the interception by Trey Morrison and he ran it back to the 29-yard line and we still didn’t score where we missed the field goal.
So the second thing would be special teams. We were not good in special teams on Saturday night. We had one bad play per week and the rest of it’s been good Saturday night. We didn’t have any good punts. Jonathan Kim kicking the ball out of the back of the end zone and on kickoffs, it was about the only thing we did well.
So we’ve got to do much better in that area. And we were 0-3 on fourth downs and NC State’s had three straight weeks of goal-line stands. So we’re going to have to do a better job in in toughness situations, in short yard.
Coach, speaking of a short yardage, there’s one guy you can always count on picking that up and sometimes long yards as well. I have to say something about Javonte Williams, who has just been fantastic.
Yeah, he’s been one of our best players. Somebody asked me, ‘he dropped the last pass of the game and how should he feel?’ And I said, he should feel great. Because we wouldn’t have been in the game without Javonte Williams. He played better than anybody else on our team. And, he’s tough. He’s smart. He’s big. And he’s a class act, that young man I’m really proud of it.
Well, one thing — one final question here — and that is something that some of us have forgotten because we’ve so excited to actually be playing college football is that this pandemic is hanging over everybody and you have to make all these special arrangements to make sure that you’re safe and all that kind of thing. And that has to weigh heavily on you after weeks and weeks of doing all this.
It does. It’s different, but the young guys want to play and then if they want to play, then we want to help them play. And it is different. When you go on the road hotel to play a seven o’clock game at night and they can’t even have pregame meals. They’re grabbing food and going back to the rooms and it’s all different. But still they’re safe.
They’re doing an incredible job across the country of trying to make sure that they’re handling things right with their mask and their social distancing and making sure that they keep their hand sanitized. So I’m really proud of the kids and the coaches in college football that they’re trying their best to make this work.
Well, Coach, you got anything to say to the fans coming up for Saturday’s game here in Chapel Hill?
No, let’s stay behind these kids. They tried hard. A lot of teams would have laid down at halftime. And I’m so proud that this one didn’t, I’m proud of the coaches for picking them back up. And instead of beating them down at a time where they were struggling, really disappointed, we didn’t win the game. I thought we were on the last drive. I told the guys, I thought it’d be the biggest comeback in North Carolina history at halftime.
And, they’re coming. We’re making progress. We are a work in progress. We’re not near there yet. And I knew that I could see that watching them practice every day. But sometimes again, we get ahead of ourselves and media got a little ahead of us on this one because we looked good at times. Good enough to be the fifth-ranked team in the country. And now they’ve got us ranked 13th. Hopefully we are, we’ve got to continue to grow, but everybody stay with us young team and help them. They need people to be positive for them.
Featured image via ACC Media
