UNC football coach Mack Brown joined Ron Stutts this morning for “Mondays with Mack,” presented by Chapel Hill Tire. Read his entire interview below:
First of all, it is great to be back with you. It seems like it’s been forever.
Right? It really does. The Wake Forest game seems like it was about eight weeks ago. We were talking this morning. Who’s that last team we played? But it’s a fun week before we get started. We want to wish everybody a Happy Thanksgiving week. It’ll be much different than our normal Thanksgiving, but 2020 has been much different than anything else in our lives anyway. So that’s just what we would expect. And the other thing, Ron, we would have had a full house for Syracuse and the opener. We have the great wins over Virginia Tech, NC State and Wake Forest, and a wonderful game that that was tight till the end. And I just hate so much that all of our Chapel Hill fans, and our great fans across the state, haven’t been able to come and watch the games in person. It would have been so special. And I can’t even imagine the crowd that we would have been Friday at 3:30, if everybody could come for the Notre Dame game.
Well, of course being a bye week this past weekend, I’m wondering, how does that change your schedule with the team? Could you kind of go through that for, for me and for our listeners?
Yes. We started practice August 6th, which seems like forever. And our season would normally be over this Friday. We would’ve played NC State here the last game of the year, and then start looking at the bowl games. And now we’ve got two extra weeks. So what we felt rotten is we practice and we’re in the middle of finals. So today every player on our team’s got a final. So we’re not going to practice today. We didn’t practice Friday and Saturday because we wanted the guys to get fresh. We did practice yesterday afternoon and had had what would normally be our Tuesday practice. So our routine is really shuffled around, but we feel like that the guys had to have time to prepare for their finals. And at the same time we needed to get some rest before the big game.
Well, I was going to say that, you know, having a bye week gives you more time to prepare for the next game than a normal week would do, but because of the holiday and all those special circumstances, it doesn’t sound like you’ve had a lot of extra time to prepare for the Fighting Irish.
No, but we have been able to prepare as coaches. So we have a good plan. Since the Duke week was disrupted because of the election, the NCAA gave the guys a day off to vote. So we’re, we’re going back to that plan of practice that week because the kids were fresh. They didn’t play well against Duke. So we, we got three practices in for Notre Dame last week and that will have a norm as normal a week as we can this week before the game.
Well, that Wake Forest game was a nail biter toward the end there. But you know, it’s such an exhilarating victory for your team. What is your sense on how the players are feeling now, after all this time heading into this game, this weekend, this Friday and the home stretch of the season coming up.
Ron, they’re getting more confident. We actually came from behind them, won a game late at Wake Forest. We lost the game at Florida State late, which I thought we should’ve won. We lost the game late at Virginia, which I thought we should’ve won. And then finally we’re down and we come back and we just continue to learn to win. So they’re improving very quickly. You believe we’ve been as good as anybody in the country. Our kicking game is getting better. Our defense is I think sixth in the league, which to show you where defense is are right now, they’re struggling. But we’ve got to continue to do a better job of stopping the run. I was proud of our defense, that the five straight series in the second half against Wake, they stepped up and got us off the field and allowed us to score and come back and win the game. But we’ll have trouble with that Notre Dame running game this weekend, those guys are big and strong and do a great job.
What are specific things that you’re looking for from your players?
Yeah. So I want them to play with confidence where this is a national game. You’ve got Kirk Herbstreit and Chris Fowler and Maria Taylor coming in. That’s the ABC national game. So ABC thought it was one of the best games in the country for this time. It’s good for our program. So I want to still live up to those expectations against a great team.
Notre Dame probably doesn’t want to get into a shootout with the Tar Heels, even though they are ranked No. 2 in the country. Is their defense good enough to keep it a low scoring game?
Yes, Ron, they’re the, I think they’re the number one defense in the conference, but I know they’re the number one defense against the run. They’re rushing for 233 yards a game we’re rushing for 233 yards a game, and they’re leading the league in a time of possession. They pound you, they run the ball. Ian Book’s a very good quarterback like [Sam Howell], I think he’s 28-3 as a starter. And I think he’s only throwing one interception all year. So they take care of the ball. They’re very well coached. They’re big. They’re just massive and they try to pound it and keep the ball.
Is this Notre Dame team the best one that Coach [Brian Kelly] has had?
I would think so that they’ve got everything, Ron, there and therefore they’ll have a chance to, if they can get through this weekend. And we hope they can’t, but they’ll have a chance to play Clemson again, it looks like where the conference championship and then them end Clemson could end up in the playoff.
You touched on this earlier, but I just want to touch on it one more time. Can you imagine what a packed stadium on Friday would mean for both teams and what would you like to tell folks in the Chapel Hill community and how they can best help support this great young team with this big?
I think the biggest thing is that since there’ll only be 3,500 in the stadium, and since people can’t go dress up, like you’d be going to the game at home and sit in front of that TV at 3:30 and just scream and be positive. And if you’re an Internet person get on that Internet and be positive for these players. They’re trying as hard as they can to do everything they can do. We’re headed in a positive direction. There’s a lot of fun times ahead. But this is a fun game and we actually play Notre Dame in a three game series here. We’ve got them at home. We go up to South Bend next year, and then in the third year they come back here. So this will be a great series for the future.
Fantastic, Coach. I just got to say, you set a great example for all of us and staying positive, and certainly everything is on the right track. And there are some great days ahead for Carolina football, and I hope we can continue to be on the roll on Friday.
Well, thank you, Ron. I look forward to seeing everybody on Friday.
Featured image via ACC Media
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