MIAMI GARDENS, FL – Mack Brown has said on several occasions he doesn’t want his program renting a house in the neighborhood of top-10 football teams, he wants them to buy one.
Renting is a flare up, owning is foundational.
And after what his North Carolina program has faced over the last five weeks, it’s fair to say the Tar Heels better plan on hiring a real estate agent, because they’re headed in that very direction.
Since the day after Thanksgiving, UNC battled No. 2 Notre Dame until the final minute before the Fighting Irish sealed the deal in Chapel Hill, blew out No. 10 Miami on the road, and led No. 5 Texas A&M in the fourth quarter and was even with less than five minutes remaining here in the Orange Bowl before falling 41-27.
The final score is misleading, very misleading. It doesn’t reflect how well Carolina’s young defense played for most of the night nor does it offer a clear indication of how hard Brown’s team fought.
Especially under the circumstances.
Carolina was an obvious underdog no matter what, but when four of its top five players bowed out so they could instead focus on their NFL futures, not one person without blood ties to those in the program truly thought the Tar Heels would or even could beat the second best team from the SEC.
But there they were, Eugene Asante, Josh Downs, Tony Grimes, Ja’Quarious Conley, Kyler McMichael, Khafre Brown and so many other young Heels battling the Aggies to just about the very end. A failed fourth-and-1 with 2:24 left pretty much sealed UNC’s fate.
But what it learned in the process was this program is absolutely headed in the right direction. So many Carolina teams of the past in such a spotlight would have been clobbered here. They wouldn’t have routed Miami three weeks also here inside Hard Rock Stadium, nor would they have hung with the Irish on a day the offense turned in its least effective performance of the season.
The offense had some issues tonight, too. They managed just 324 total yards, easily the second lowest output of the season, and Sam Howell wasn’t all that sharp in the first half, though he hit some strikes in the second half, including a 75-yarder to Downs and another beautifully thrown ball to Khafre Brown that should have put the Heels back in the lead in the fourth quarter. But he dropped the ball, and that lesson will no doubt serve him well, as it did his record-setting brother, who’s now off to the pay-for-play league.
Forget the final score, North Carolina made progress tonight – a lot of progress. The head coach knows it, too.
“We’re about to be really good,” Mack Brown said.
Junior linebacker Jeremiah Gemmel sees it, as well.
“I think we're really close,” he said. “They're a No. 5 team, who a lot of people thought should have been in the playoffs, and we had them tied up (five) minutes left, and they busted one for a long touchdown. You take that out, no telling, it could have been different for us.”
What’s also encouraging is even though Brown and the players spoke about positives, they carrry an undeniable belief of belonging on the field with the Texas A&Ms and Notre Dames of the world. Howell’s words made that clear.
“I just told our guys in the locker room, ‘remember this feeling, and everyone that's coming back, just use this feeling to motivate you in the locker room because we can get so much better,’” he said. “Everyone in this program has stuff that we can do better, stuff that we can work on. We were so close.”
Correction, they ARE so close. And they’re getting even closer.
