UNC football coach Mack Brown joined Ron Stutts this morning for “Mondays with Mack,” presented by Chapel Hill Tire. Read his entire interview below:
It was a miserable day as far as the weather was concerned, but everything else about that game on Saturday was perfect. The game was sold out. And what a great idea to let all those who came and stayed through the rain celebrate with the team on Saturday afternoon.
It was a great day for us, Ron. Number one, we sold it out. Number two, the guys were supposed to dominate a lesser team and they did that from the first snap of the game. And what that does is allows you to play a lot of the guys that don’t get to play very much and we’ve got to develop depth.
So we played our second team a lot more than we did our first team and then guys that never get in a ballgame got in. I loved seeing the guys celebrate. That was all really cool.
The fans that were there were great. They were loud. I was disappointed that a lot of our fans decided to stay home probably cause it was Mercer and probably because it was in the rain. And we’ve got to get so we show up and we’re gonna move those type games to the first of the year instead of the last of the year because our fans have been so great this year.
And like I said, some of them stayed at home and watched and the ones that were here, a lot of them were up in the warm and cold parts of the Blue Zone or the Pope Box or up underneath the press box. But other than that, I thought it was just a great day for Carolina football.
You mentioned your guys cheering on the guys who don’t normally get a chance to play. One of the endearing moments for me was watching that game and seeing Antonio Williams celebrating on the sideline when somebody else scored a touchdown. That was amazing.
It really is. Antonio’s just a great young man and he really signifies what we want as a student athlete and football player at the University of North Carolina. He’s smart. He’s going to graduate. He’s been upbeat the entire year. He’s been a great special teams player. He’s done everything we ask him to do, even when he hasn’t carried the ball a lot.
He’s encouraging the other running backs and teammates and the whole team was like that Saturday. And I think that’s what we’re doing. Ron. We had some selfishness and that’s what happens when you lose. And right now our guys are giving up a lot of their individualism to try to help somebody else. That’s when you start getting better.
Couple of things you mentioned during the post-game. You said something about focus and that’s a word that I wanted to really focus on this morning. I think Sam Howell is just about as focused as anybody I’ve ever seen and the guy is only 18 years old. How you explain that?
I don’t know. I think part of it’s because he grew up in an athletic family. His mom and dad were athletes at Appalachian State. His dad’s a coach, so he’s been a gym rat his entire life. He spends all of his time either in the classroom or over here watching video with Coach [Phil] Longo and the offensive coaches. And I just think that’s his life.
He grew up wanting to be the quarterback at North Carolina. So Ron, none of this is too big for him. And when he breaks a record, like he did Saturday with more freshmen touchdown passes than anybody in college football history, that’s okay to him. He expected that and, and it’s kinda fun to watch.
Well you were also talking about Sam Howell and your outstanding receiving corps. And you mentioned that the passing game is certainly one of the very best.
We’ve talked a lot about it. I think we’re fourth in the ACC at rushing. So we’ve run the ball well.
We’ve thrown the ball very well and when we have, we’ve usually won the games. But at the same time our, our red zone offense hadn’t been as good and even though the opponent was less on Saturday afternoon, we’ve really worked on the red zone offense and we scored a lot more touchdowns.
Well I guess time for celebrating it is over and it’s time to get down to business and think about the Wolf Pack. Win number six coming up, a bowl bid and beating NC State from the very first time since 2015. How big is this game also for Carolina’s recruiting?
Ron, we’ve already done a great job in recruiting and most of the recruits that are coming have already decided. So it’s interesting that they decide so early now that it’s very different. Obviously down the road for you to recruit, you need to beat the in-state teams so you’re the cool place to be.
NC State’s done a good job over the last number of years beating us. That’s something that we need to do. We beat Duke and that was important to our program. We haven’t done that in a while and now we need to beat State for a lot of the same reasons.
When you have a relevant game at the end of November and Carolina football with the struggles we’ve had the last couple of years against your rival that can send you to a bowl game, it’s a lot of fun. So this should be a fun week for our last game of the season.
It’s always fun to go to a bowl no matter where it is. But, I don’t think a lot of people think about the importance of all those extra practices you get and the opportunity to get better for not only this season but for next year as well.
It’s very important, especially with a young team. We just lose a few seniors. We would have 13 practices leading into our bowl game. You only have 15 practices in spring practice. So it basically gives you two spring practices when you are going to a bowl.
So absolutely, we need to beat our rival, but it gives us extra opportunity for practice for the guys and some fun. They get some bowl gifts, they get to travel, they get one last game together. So this is like our championship game. This is the game that we have to win to continue to play and the guys are understanding that I think is as we approach this week.
Well, you know, it will be North Carolina state’s championship game as well. Playing on the road and prime time games at night, of course, on national television. How do you keep your team not only excited, but again, that word that we mentioned earlier “focused.”
If a guy on our football team is not focused for Saturday night at seven o’clock to play NC State on national TV, then he ought to give up football. That’s what I’ve said. Have fun this week. But you want to be in a game that matters this time of the year and you put yourself in that position.
These guys have had so many great wins and they’ve had so many heartbreaks. It’s just been an unbelievable year with close games. So this would be a great way to finish it.
Coach, looking back on this season, has it surpassed your true expectations from last summer?
It really has Ron. After we beat the South Carolina and Miami in the first two ball games I started like everybody else, I started thinking, “Ooh, we, we may have a chance here.”
And then we lost a lot of secondary guys and our defense isn’t as good now as it was in those first two games or even by the Clemson game when we started just dropping like flies in the secondary. It was really unbelievable.
But we keep getting better and the young corners are trying to pick it up and come on. So, if we can finish this thing right this weekend, yes, it would far exceed what I felt like it at least by mid season.
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