UNC football coach Mack Brown joined Ron Stutts this morning for “Mondays with Mack,” presented by Chapel Hill Tire. Read his entire interview below:
I’ve been looking forward to talking to you because everybody wants to know what in the world you said to the guys at halftime on Friday night against Wake Forest because whatever it was, it certainly worked.
Oh Ron, thank you. We were behind Oklahoma State once when I was at Texas, 35-7 in the first half and ended up 35-14 at halftime. And we came back and won the game 56-35. And after the game, I always called my mother. She was in Cookeville, Tennessee and I said, mom, how about that halftime talk? And she said, well, if you’d have done better in pregame, you wouldn’t have had to say that at halftime.
So I think that was the biggest thing. We just didn’t start with the passion and energy that we had, the other two games and we woke up at half time and I’m proud of the guys. They fought their guts out, they came back and, and dominated pretty much the second half. Just didn’t get the offense going like we needed to till the fourth quarter.
But we’re not a team, Ron, that can line up right now and play without full passion. And we spent a lot of energy and passion in those first two ball games and Wake Forest has got a good team and an older team and we just got to start better this week.
Well, certainly in the first half or first three quarters, basically Wake Forest, everything went well for them and nothing went right for Carolina. Of course you decided to take Sam Howell out and let him watch from the sidelines just for awhile. Jace Ruder came in. Tell us about your thinking on that substitution.
Well when you’re not doing well you just gotta change things up and try to get somebody to stir up something and get a little spark started. And I thought that the other thing that Phil Longo and I thought was it would probably help Sam to come over and stand and watch and see what was going on because he was struggling some early.
And when you’re not blocking people and you’re not doing the things you’re supposed to do it’s really, really tough on a freshman quarterback. So our offensive guys in general have to rally around their quarterbacks and make sure they help them more.
Much of the conversation after this game has been on the final play when clearly we got out of bounds with one second left, but the officials ran off the field, did not look at a replay and then ACC officials admitted over the weekend that yeah, there should have been one second left and you could have had one more play. I know that’s got to be frustrating to you and your guys.
Well Ron, it is. The guys fought their guts out to get back in the ball game and have a chance to win on the last play of the game. And we’ve won games on Hail Mary’s before and we were definitely trying to get there so we can have a play in the end zone. And that was just disappointing.
This was a really difficult game. But you said they came back, they never stopped fighting. What did you learn about your team in this game?
I love these young guys. The senior class has been around for 11 wins and eight wins and three wins and two wins. So they’ve been on a real roller coaster ride. I’m pulling hard for them to end their careers on a real high and they’re really trying, Ron, they’re doing everything that they can do.
We started our team meeting yesterday and I said, okay, tell me why we lost and to a man, they said, you know, coach, we just didn’t start with the same passion that we did the other two games and we can’t do that. They understand they’re trying and I think we’ll see a really good effort this weekend.
Well everybody knows that injuries are a big part of the game. Any other injuries coming out of the Wake Forest game that we don’t know about?
Oh, we’re looking at it right now. It’s too early to tell, but we are really a banged up football team and we’ve played three really, really physical games. And what we’ve told our guys is that we don’t have a lot of depth.
We do have a lot of injuries. We’re not going to sit around and talk about that and use it as an excuse because anytime you talk about injuries or anytime you talk about what you don’t have, it just gives your coaches and players an excuse to use it. And we’re just going to try to figure out how to beat Appalachian State
Before we even talk about Appalachian, what are you going to be focused on during practice this week after that disappointing loss on Friday night?
We’re not running the ball well and therefore we’re in third down in long and we’re not doing well on third downs offensively. So that’s the biggest thing. We’ve done most of the things right. We got to do a better job stopping the run on offense and we’ve got to do a better job running the ball.
Appalachian has a great running back in Darrington Evans, a 200 pound senior. He’s the nation’s leading rusher after the last two weeks. So we’ve got to get after him because he’s really good and they’ve got an experienced offensive line. So when they see that Wake Forest ran the ball on us, I’m sure they’re going to try to do the same thing.
They still have a quarterback in junior Zach Thomas that can throw the ball down field. But we are one of the leaders in third down defense in the country. We’re playing better on defense right now than we did on offense Friday night till the fourth quarter. So we’ve got to go back and just reestablish our offense and who we are and who we want to be.
Anything else about Appalachian State that you need to tell us?
Just that they play so hard. You go back and look at their senior classes compared to ours. In 2015 they won 11, in ’16 they won 10, ’17 that won nine and last year they won 11. So they’ve been a lot better than we have and they’re a lot more used to winning than we are. So we’ll have our hands full with this bunch this weekend.
Coach, I’ve asked you this question before and uh, I don’t want to be redundant, but what do you ask for from the fans in Kenan Stadium on Saturday afternoon?
Well, it’s a complete sell out. So we love that. And Ron, we want the same atmosphere that we had for the Miami game, even though that was a night game. And this is a 3:30 game, but we want everybody in their seats by three o’clock so we can tell our team that fans are fighting for them and the fans need to be a huge difference this weekend for Appalachian again, like they were for Miami.
Our students bought picked up all their tickets, 7,000 of them within 30 minutes. So they’re excited about the weekend. They’re excited about the game and we’re excited about it and we’re gonna need everybody’s help to win.
Well, coach, we know that Carolina is going to bounce back and I know that you’re saying all the right things right now, so hey, get after it on a Saturday afternoon and we’ll be listening.
Thanks Ron. Thanks for having me on.
