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Now Is the Winter of Our Discontent
A perspective from E.B. Phillips
Although the weather in Charlotte was a wet 70 degrees, Tar Heel fans felt a bitter wind blow through Bank of America Stadium with North Carolina’s disheartening 21-38 loss to the South Carolina Gamecocks in the Duke’s Mayo Bowl last Thursday.
It wasn’t that losing the game meant the first losing season of the Mack Brown era. It wasn’t that the loss portrayed an uninspired performance by a team with so much to prove. It wasn’t even that North Carolina not only looked unprepared but, according to Brown in his post-game presser, was unprepared for South Carolina’s game plan. What some of the North Carolina faithful felt for the first time in the Mack Brown era was a chilling undercurrent of doubt.
In its loss to North Carolina State (UNC’s true football rival) to close out what had been the most promising regular season since Mack Brown’s departure almost a quarter century ago, UNC surrendered its ACC campaign by condensing a season worth of random and inexplicable mental lapses into an epic ninety-five second collapse. How epic? According to ESPN Stats and Info, NCSU became the first team to win a game in the 2021 season when trailing by nine with under 2:30 remaining. Prior to Carolina’s unteachable moment the record for teams in the same two-minute drill was 0-451.
It’s hard to question the impact Mack Brown has had on a resurging Tar Heel football program. As an authentic sports celebrity, Brown’s reputation as a personable and well-liked peer and professional has supported his recognition as a legitimate sports brand. And it’s the market value of that personality that has accounted for a significant amount of goodwill value for Carolina football. Funds for facilities, competitive wages for football staff, reestablished relationships with high school coaches and a legitimate pitch powered by his natural gifts for selling the brand have all brought high-profile and national recognition to the Carolina program. And along with that recognition comes expectations; expectations fueled by promises made, two seasons of improvement on the playing field and, of course, Sam Howell.
But expectations come with a price, and when those include Carolina being highly touted as a BCS final four team, the downside becomes dangerous for a program in early stages of rebuilding. Unmet expectations go directly to credibility, and Mack Brown’s return has always been about credibility.
Following Carolina’s loss to Georgia Tech (45-22) four games into the season in an article in USA Today that sounded a bit like ‘it’s personal,’ Dan Wolken penned to a national audience:
“The Tar Heels, it turns out, were as phony as Fyre Fest and disappeared from the scene faster than Crystal Pepsi,” wrote Woken. “Yes, we were all sold a bill of goods on North Carolina this year…But for Tar Heel fans especially, this journey to 2-2 after all of the offseason hype must seem like a total scam.”
Following the embarrassment of the NC State collapse, there arose echoes from his last few years at Texas when Brown’s credibility as a game time coach contributed to his ouster. Every televised recap of the loss to State seemed to reference a failure of coaching, although generously footnoted by a consistence reference to what a great guy he is.
And, while no one dared mention it aloud, the NC State loss left Carolina fans shaking their heads in both disappointment and questions about the coaching staff. Poised for a monumental season with arguably Carolina’s first legitimate Heisman Trophy candidate under center, the Tar Heels season deteriorated into Sam Howell running for his life and taking hit after hit on the team’s way to finishing in the bottom five of DI Schools in sacks allowed. On the sidelines in Raleigh during crunch time, Coach Brown looked his age.
Thankfully for Tar Heel fans there was a bunch happening after the Wolfpack loss left them paralyzed for words. Distractions included Wake Forest beating Boston College, preventing the Woofers from stepping over the Tar Heel’s cold dead body into the ACC Championship Game. The bright lights and sounds of the BCS Playoffs dazzled. Sam Howell opted in. The Duke Mayo Bowl offered some hope. And, like the inflating lifeboat that rocketed Tom Hanks past the sinking wreckage below him in Castaway, Mack Brown delivered a Top 8 Recruiting Class.
But below that bobbing optimism was a creeping concern: a concern, perhaps, reinforced by Coach Brown following every loss this season with his sincere deflection of questions about effort, preparedness, penalties and on-field breakdowns. “It’s on me,” he said, sounding a bit like a salesman with no answers to detailed questions about what he is selling.
Coming out of Raleigh, the Tar Heels season resembled a decked heavyweight boxer saved by the bell. Wobbling back into the ring in the Duke Mayo Bowl, South Carolina knocked the Heels out in the first round of a game that had some fans questioning Howell’s admirable decision to play. Sacked four times in the game and, reminiscent of the regular season, Howell’s athleticism was reduced to a scramble to avoid injury. And the Tar Heel fans dream season was reduced to no more than woulda, coulda, shoulda.
In the post-game video conference, Coach Brown admitted that the Tar Heels weren’t properly prepared for the Gamecocks game plan. Typically vague, Brown’s responses to sportswriter’s question included big picture answers like, “They ran it. We didn’t.” And “We’ve got to get more leaders.”
In what could have been mistaken for displaced blame for a disappointing season, Brown even commented “we won’t be ranked in the top eight teams” next year, referencing again those pesky expectations. And though he didn’t say it in post-game Charlotte, his words from earlier interviews still rang true for Coach Brown at the end of the most disappointing season in Carolina football:
“It’s on me.”
“Viewpoints” on Chapelboro is a recurring series of community-submitted opinion columns. All thoughts, ideas, opinions and expressions in this series are those of the author, and do not reflect the work or reporting of 97.9 The Hill and Chapelboro.com.
