UNC football coach Mack Brown joined Ron Stutts this morning for “Mondays with Mack,” presented by Chapel Hill Tire. Read his entire interview below:
Mack Brown is with us this morning and Coach, thanks for being with us to kick off another season of Mondays with Mack. Although this show is airing on Tuesday because of yesterday’s holiday.
Thank you, Ron. It’s great to be back and it looks like we’re actually going to have college football season and our players are very, very excited.
I’m sure and I think every Tar Heel fan is excited about this. Can you put into words how unusual is preseason training camp has been for you?
The only thing I’ve told the players is the only certainty about this time of 2020 is uncertainty. Because every time we’ve asked somebody, ‘Can you answer this for me? Does this make sense? Well, I’m not sure. No, let’s wait and see, I think it will work. Here’s what we’re going to have to do. Not, not like normal.’ So we have changed everything.
The kids have been incredible because we eat differently. We sleep differently. We work out differently. We practice differently. Everything we’re doing is not the norm. And I will say I’ve been so amazed with the resilience, the patients and the consistency of the way these young people have been working and they’re not even questioning.
Then Ron, you throw social injustice on top of it. And obviously with the pandemic, we’ve got economic issues and political issues and that our country is so split. So I’ve really been amazed with these players. And I appreciate them so much because they’ve helped me get through this. All of us have had things that we love so much taken away from us. And you need people to support you. This is a very difficult time for mental health and those were the addictions. And so all the issues in our lives seem to have been compounded at one time, but the players have made this thing where we can all get through.
Well, you’ve certainly done an amazing job. And so have they, but I know it’s been a really difficult time for everybody in so many ways, but what was the best thing about getting ready during a pandemic?
The best thing is that with crisis, your team pulls together or you break apart, and this team has pulled together and they’ve been fun and they’re stronger together now than they were. There were a few guys that decided not to play, and that was fair. And we understand, but then the guys that decided to play said, let’s make this work. Let’s take care of ourselves. Let’s go with the guidelines. Let’s wear a mask. Let’s social distance. Because we want to play and we want to win.
Now we’re at a point where it is actual reality and I’m not sure they thought until a couple of weeks ago that we had a chance to play, but they still worked out like we were playing. And now here we are. So I’m just so proud of them and the way they’ve handled it.
Well, of course, season opener coming up on Saturday against Syracuse. What has your staff done to create something of a game day atmosphere?
The ACC office is going to allow us to play music during the game between plays. They’re actually going to let have some level of crowd noise that they’re trying to figure out what that means for everybody to be fair. You can use your video board. We’re going to have some messages from our parents to the players to just say, thank you for being who you are. So everybody’s having to be more creative. Some people are putting cutouts in the stands, but it’s going to be different.
Ron, our few scrimmages we’ve had here in preseason, we’ve stopped them and looked up in the stands and see 55,000 empty seats and said, okay, this is your crowd noise. This is what you’ve got. So just get ready to it. It’s going to be more like a, uh, a scrimmage against some other team because we love our fans and they stepped up so much last year, selling out every ball game and, and Ron, I’m so proud of this year.
70 percent of our season ticket holders either donated their money back to the athletics department because they’re all struggling for money across the country right now in athletics, or they rolled their ticket money over until next year. So our season ticket holders have really stepped up again.
You’re listening to Mack Brown here on Mondays with Mack on 97.9 The Hill. Mack, let’s talk about your offense, which has of course, 10 starters back. And you’ve got your outstanding, now sophomore, quarterback, Sam Howell. Tell us about your offense.
Offense should be good. Not only do we have 10 starters back, we’ve got four of our five coaches back. We lost the tight end coach and John Lilly stepped in. He was with the Cleveland Browns. He’s had great history with tight ends at Florida State and Georgia and the Los Angeles Rams, and then the Cleveland Browns. So he’s done a tremendous job and it’s been an easy insertion of a new coach for us.
So not much has changed, so we should see a better offense because they should know what to do. And we can add some wrinkles to it. Now that everybody’s on the same page. And especially when you’ve got your quarterback back, the two best players on the offense outside of Sam to me are still our running backs. So we’ve got to get the ball to them in a lot of different ways, but I’m really, really proud of who those guys are. And they’ve worked really, really hard.
I’ve heard you say also how improved and deep your defenses this season.
Yes. We may not be great with experience upfront on defense, but we got a lot more players, so we shouldn’t have to play a Jason Strawbridge or an Aaron Crawford 90 plays in a ball game. We’ve got guys that we can rotate now that will really, really help us.
We do have four linebackers that can play. Last year, we only had Jeremiah Gemmell and Chazz Surratt. They had to play too much. So we got tired some at the end of ball games. So we should be able to put in Khadry Jackson and Eugene Asante now and rotate them. And we’re actually two deep in the secondary. Last year we didn’t have enough defensive backs to play against Duke. So we actually had to move DeAndre Hollins to corner during a ball game and he was playing nickel. So we really feel like that not only is our defense should be better, but it should be deeper.
Once again, we only lost one coach on defense. We brought in Jovan Dewitt who was an easy coach with transition because he had worked with coach Jay Bateman, our defensive coordinator at Army for two years. And he also is coaching our special teams. So we feel like that we have a chance to be good on defense. We’ve just got to step up with that defensive line and help the guys. And when you’re improved that much on defense, it helps your offense, Ron, because a lot of times in preseason the defenses, they flipped the offense. So that’s been fun to watch.
You just mentioned special teams, how about the kicking game and special teams, will that phase of the game be better this year?
They should be. We were average last year. And when you’re 7-6 and you’re in the middle of the pack for the ACC with your special teams, that that’s usually fair because we need to be better than that. We want to be the best special teams in the league.
We’ve got Ben Kiernan coming back as our punter, he is more experienced. He’s got a great leg, but just gotta be consistent there. We’ve got Noah Ruggles coming back, but we also signed Grayson Atkins, the All-American kicker from Furman, and he’s been doing a good job for us. And we’ve got Michael Carter returning kickoffs and Dazz Newsome returning punts. So we’ve got a chance with really good, special teams and talented kickers and punters to be really good in special teams. We’ve really worked a lot in that area, but that’s an area that we really need to improve.
Boy, I’ll tell you, it feels like reality now that you’re actually gonna play. And there are always first game jitters for players and coaches. How do you keep the mistakes down in, in this situation?
Watching the games over the last weekend, there were so many mistakes and just teams didn’t play well. And I’m sure that it’s been so many distractions for these young people that it’s been hard to get them ready to play. We’ve told ours, nobody’s going to care about the pandemic on Saturday during the ball game. So it’ll be a, a great distraction for everybody to have something fun to do and watch.
We’re asking Carolina fans to wear your game day gear at home and turn that TV on and yell so loud we can hear you in the stadium. But we’ve told the players, you can’t play on on Monday. You can’t play on Tuesday. You keep preparing, you go through your process. Most first games are lost, they’re not won, and they’re lost because of mistakes with turnovers or kicking game issues. So what we’ve got to do is make sure that we do the things we know what we need to do to win the game and not worry about everything else.
Okay. I just want to ask you one question about the opponent. I know that the opponent is not as important this week as your own team, but what worries you most about Syracuse?
Syracuse comes in with a high tempo offense. [Dino Babers’] offense came from the Art Briles tree at Baylor. So they know what they’re doing offensively, but I think more than anything else, our thinnest position is the offensive line and they hired Tony White, the new defensive coordinator that grew up under Rocky Long at San Diego state. he runs a 3-3-5, Ron, and they’re going to blitz every play. So we’ve got to protect Sam and we’ve got to make sure he has time to throw the ball. I think that’s the biggest concern that I would have going into Saturday.
Well, it’s going to be exciting. Fans in the stands or not a lot of us will be watching it home and following every single play, and Coach,, I know you’re glad to get it all underway. I just want to say good luck on Saturday against the Orange and for the rest of the season as well.
Well, thank you, Ron. Thanks for having me on and look forward to talking with you each week.
Featured image via Mike Jones/UNC Athletics
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