UNC football coach Mack Brown joined Ron Stutts this morning for “Mondays with Mack,” presented by Chapel Hill Tire. Read his entire interview below:
Welcome back to Mondays with Mac, Coach. It is great to talk to you again. It seems like it’s been a year.
Thank you, Ron. It really does. I was talking to our director of communications this morning, Jeremy Sharpe. And he said, this is the longest break that we’ve had here in 68 years. There was a polio outbreak in 1952. So I think we’re going into our ninth week of practice to prepare for our second game.
It’s amazing coach. After Charlotte canceled, you said you were treating the longer layoff, like starting the season all over again. So my question is how did you approach that with your team?
What I told our team is that we lost spring practice. We missed a lot of summer work, so this gives us a chance to catch up. We’re in better shape. We’re still fresh. We’ve had a lot of practice, so it’s like we just finished our spring practice and now we’re ready to restart our season. Syracuse seems like it was months ago, even though it was two weeks ago, we did a lot of great things in the Syracuse game, but there are a lot of things we needed to fix. We’ve been able to do that. So we’re really excited about having an opportunity to go to Boston and play this weekend.
So now it’s like starting the season all over on the road against the good Boston College team. What concerns you most about not playing a game in three weeks, and then having to prepare for a really good opponent?
Well, the toughest thing is, is special teams because we’re seeing some awful special teams across the country. I mean, sitting there watching games this weekend, it was frightening to see the number of bad snaps and blocked punts and fumbles. And it was just atrocious. And since you don’t do your special teams live in, in most cases, uh, that’s where most of the mistakes happen. The other thing is just turnovers because you haven’t hit, uh, as much as you normally would when you’re playing games. Uh, you don’t have to hit as much in practice because you’re hitting every Saturday. But when you have this long of a layoff, you’re really concerned about ball security.
Now that you’re back into a game week practice and what will be your biggest goals, getting back into game shape for 2-0 Boston College. And also you mentioned turnovers at your defense has been really good. And you mentioned that you’d like to create more turnovers.
Yes. The defense played an outstanding game against Syracuse and had seven sacks and really disrupted the DeVito, their quarterback a lot, but we didn’t force turnovers. We’ve got to do a better job. We had one interception late in the game. We need to strip some balls. We have a little saying, Ron, you gotta tip it and strip it. So we need the tip, some balls from the big quarterback at Boston College this weekend and try to get our hands on them. And they’ve got two really good running backs in [David Bailey and Travis Levy.] We’ve got to do a good job of trying to strip the ball away from people. And we, that was one of the areas we emphasized that we need to improve. And we just didn’t do it in the first ball game.
Well, the Eagles’ quarterback, the Notre Dame transfer [Phil Jurkovec] looked great against Duke, but not so good in that three point, win over Texas State. What are the challenges of containing him and his excellent receiver Hunter Long?
Well he’s the quarterback is six, five, he’s 230-pounds. He was very, very highly recruited going into Notre Dame. Um, so the, the more he plays, the better he gets because he only had like six or seven games that he played in at Notre Dame. So, uh, he he’s learning so much every time he plays. So you, you just have to feel like he’ll get better and better and better. And he could run to be 230 pounds. Long is, uh, arguably the best tight end in the country. I mean, he’s just been phenomenal in the first few ball games and here’s a guy that’s had 16 catches for 174 yards and two touchdowns only after two games. So he’s fun to watch. And, and Steve Addonizio recruited the offensive line as good as anybody. There were four guys that that’s some type of ACC awards in their offensive line last year. And all four of those are back for their five starters. Then you’ve got Long at tight end, they’ve got some speed outside. So, uh, they’re an offense that we’re going to have to really get after.
Well, we mentioned earlier that it’s like playing your very first game on the road and because of the pandemic situation, what extra precautions and preparations are you taking to so that your team has done such an excellent job and can stay safe on the road?
That’s why we did want to play Charlotte. We wanted to have two games at home so we can get settled with the new guidelines for, for COVID. But going on the road is going to be different. We’ll have to wear our mask while we’re on the bus, while we’re on the plane. Obviously the guys will be staying at a hotel it’s different than what we do here, but at least we’ve stayed in a hotel. They won’t be able to eat or drink while they’re on the bus or the plane and everything will be a little bit different. But the guys are excited about this. Most of our guys have never been to Boston. So as strange as it is, and this environment, that’s still fun for them to go and Boston College, isn’t the team that’s, that’s normally on our schedule. So this is a crossover game that they say happens about every seven years. So I’m not sure we’ll see them again, unless it’s in the postseason.
I would imagine that you watched a lot of football over the weekend. What caught your eye and some of the other games involving ACC teams?
I thought that the thing that caught my eye the most was in college football in general were just the mistakes. You can tell that we’ve missed spring practice and a lot of things this summer. Um, and, and we’ve all been on kind of a roller coaster. And at the same time I’m guys that, uh, teams like Virginia Tech and Kansas State that miss some guys because of COVID and miss some coaches at Virginia Tech. And it’s been incredible the way these guys have just, they just keep working. So I felt really, really proud for college football that the coaches have pulled together to try to get a season that these young guys can play. The players are playing hard and we’ve got our game back and it’s still strange without fans in the stands, but those fans, I feel them at home screaming and shouting, and we’ve got when we get back from Virginia Tech here next week, we’ll have some fans in the stands.
And hopefully as, as the fall continues, we’ll get more and more fans in the stands. But especially the families, we’ll be back to be able to see our game against Virginia Tech here in Chapel Hill. So, Ron, I think everybody that’s involved is doing the best job that they can, uh, to try to have some joy during this awful time that we’re dealing with. And, and I’m really proud of, of all the people involved of getting college football back on the field. And I’m most proud of the young people that are playing because they’re still having fun that they don’t even know that there’s not people in the crowd. They don’t even know there’s code out there when they’re playing. So, uh, it’s a good break for all of us.
Well, coach, I wanted to commend you for the excellent job that you and your staff and everybody involved has done, you know, to keep everybody safe and to make sure that all those players do the right things. And it’s been really encouraging to see that. I just hope that everybody else does the same thing.
Well, thank you, Ron. I’m so proud of these guys. I’ve been up and down like, like all of us when we get things taken away from us that we love, there’s a certain amount of depression and anxiety that pops in. And, uh, you just hate seeing what’s happening right now in our country, whether it’s social justice issues or people that are hungry or losing jobs, or are getting sick or dying. And it’s just a, it’s a very, very difficult time for everybody. And, um, these young people that pick me up the staff and the players have, uh, they’ve done such a good job of trying to do things right. That it’s a, it’s really been encouraging for me.
Featured image via ACC Media
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