Ahead Of Schedule

CHAPEL HILL – In just 16 games, Mack Brown has taken North Carolina’s football program from the bowels of the ACC to a No. 5 national ranking.

Before his hiring 23 months ago, UNC had gone 6-21 over its previous 27 games. Now, the Tar Heels are on a six-game win streak in which the average score has been Carolina 44.2, Opponents 17.7.

At 3-0 and No. 5 in the nation, UNC heads to Tallahassee this weekend to take on Florida State in primetime on ABC. Needless to say, the progress Brown has made in such a short period of time has exceeded most, if not all, projected timetables. And that’s only factoring those who didn’t initially question the hire.

“We are making progress,” Brown said Monday during his weekly press conference. “We're ahead of schedule. We're learning how to win. We're winning differently each weekend, which is something that's important to note.”

Anyone who seriously projected UNC would go from a tattered mess to the top five in just 16 games either isn’t being honest or are the same people who wins NCAA Tournament office pools by picking teams based on color schemes and/or nicknames. On the surface, it just wasn’t realistic.

It’s happened, however. But is it too much too soon?

After all, the Tar Heels have beaten Syracuse, perhaps the worst team in the ACC, won at a decent Boston College club and took care of a quality, but depleted, Virginia Tech squad. Yet, there were clear warts in each performance. Three wins to start the season, however, has gotten them somewhere the program has been in just six different seasons in its history and not at all since 1997: The top five.

“We're ahead of the schedule that I thought we would be on at this time,” Brown reiterated after Wednesday’s practice. “It's early in the year, we've got to play great every week to win. So, some people start acting like we're better than everybody else, we're not.

“This is a team that won two games (two) years ago, a team that won seven last year, won a bowl game came out with momentum. But we haven't proved that we're a team that's ready to line up and win every game every week.”

The four programs ahead of the Tar Heels in this week’s Associated Press poll each have carved out healthy places in the sport’s history. Clemson has three national championships and is the best program in the nation right now, Alabama might be the greatest program of all time, Georgia has a strong history and Notre Dame is arguably the second most famous American sports team after the New York Yankees.

Next in line is North Carolina. Not Roy Williams’ bunch, it’s Mack Brown’s guys. And they’re now tasked with backing up the ranking by taking care of business each week or their stay among the game’s elites will be short lived.

“People expect that out of Clemson. People expect that out of Ohio State. People are talking about that with Alabama and Georgia - and this weekend, how big that game is," Brown said. "People don't really consider us in that group yet. We're a group that's done some good things on defense that had a great game on offense. But we're not a team that everybody's talking about that they know that we can play a bad game and win.”

Brown should know. He has led two different programs to the top-five in the nation, beginning 23 years ago with UNC. And he did it at places that struggled mightily before his arrival.

In the four seasons before Brown was hired by Carolina the first time in 1987, the Tar Heels combined to go 22-21-1. He tore down the program as part of a rebuilding project and had it going within a few years.

At Texas, where Brown was hired late in 1997, he took over a program that in its previous 14 seasons won just 92 games and had only eight winning records. The Longhorns won nine games in each of his first three seasons at the helm before going 11-3 in 2001, launching a stretch of nine consecutive years in which Brown led Texas to at least 10 victories. Included in that run was a national championship in 2005 and a title game loss in 2009.

So Brown isn’t guiding Carolina through uncharted waters, he knows what this stuff looks, sounds, smells and tastes like. Three games in and his team has achieved a certain status, but the hard part is staying there and building the next layers. To do so, the Tar Heels must learn how to handle prosperity. It’s an integral component in this process.

“I think that's a huge part of it,” Brown said. “And a big part of playing every week. Seasons are normally a grind, this one's a real grind. These guys, like all of us in all of the world, have been through the pandemic since the middle of March, and lives have changed.

“You've eaten different foods, you've had to work out differently. People aren't as good a shape. I told the guys today, we are so blessed to be lucky enough to be playing. Because there were times this summer that none of us thought we'd be playing.”

They are playing and enjoying themselves more than ever in their Carolina careers.

Winning always makes everything better, but teams don’t win by simply showing up. The ingredients are plentiful and form a program’s culture, from which so much internal strength comes.

“One thing that we’ve always been here is tough, win or lose we fight,” said senior running back Michael Carter, who is averaging 10.3 yards per rushing attempt so far. “And I think the biggest change is we’re just having fun with each other.”

Carter reflected on last weekend’s 56-45 win over the Hokies, a game in which he set a career-high with 214 yards rushing, by singling out center Brian Anderson’s seven knockdowns, Dazz Newsome blocking downfield, and the togetherness of the Tar Heels.

“The culture of playing for each other, selfless play, and the continued toughness is the biggest part along with just having fun because losing’s not fun,” Carter said.

Losing is something most of the Tar Heels know about, but that track has changed.

They are riding a high few could have imagined so soon after Brown’s hiring. They are ahead of schedule and know it, and now the hardest part is dealing with their sudden prosperity.

But that’s a pretty good problem to have, one that certainly beats the obstacles of 23 months ago.