CHAPEL HILL – North Carolina Coach Mack Brown met with the media via zoom Monday morning for his weekly press conference to discuss more from UNC’s win at Duke this past weekend, some elements of his team and to look ahead at Saturday’s home game with Wake Forest.
The Tar Heels (5-2) will host the Demon Deacons (4-2) at Kenan Stadium at noon.
Above is the full 29-minute video of Brown’s presser and below are some notes and pulled quotes from what he had to say:
*UNC announced before the press conference that Beau Corrales and Storm Duck are out for the Wake Forest game and Kyler McMichael and Brian Anderson will be evaluated during the week.
*The players of the game from the win over Duke, as voted by the coaches, were Jeremiah Gemmel on defense, the entire offensive line on offense, and Josh Henderson on special teams. Brown noted that Henderson is on four units.
*Brown said he’s been asked a few times about leaving the starters in the game into the fourth quarter at Duke despite the lopsided score, and in the case of this game, more specifically quarterback Sam Howell. His explanation:
“Usually, you like to keep your starters in the game through the third quarter,” Brown said. “With (Sam), he threw the interception at the end of the third quarter, and you never want to take your starting quarterback out of a game right after an interception and have him have such an outstanding performance and not feel well leaving.
“When you keep him in there, you also say, ‘Don’t run the ball, don’t scramble, throw it away, protect yourself.
*Carolina’s defense played well early in the game before it got out of hand, so Brown was pleased with that. But there are still plenty of things to pick at and improve.
“We were much better against the run. Forced two turnovers, had two fourth-down stops, played well in the red zone, (six) sacks,” he said. “The negatives were we still gave up a few explosive plays in the running game. We’ve got to tackle better. We let them get off the goal line on a third-and-18, we can’t do that.
“We had too many penalties, again. Most of the penalties were aggressively rushing the passer and they called two roughing the passers, which one Tomon Fox was on the ground and got up and hit the guy and couldn’t see him and didn’t hit him hard but he did hit him. The other one Ray Vohasek was rushing and trying to get him around the waist and they (refs) said he went a little low as he was tackling the quarterback for a sack.
“Now, there’s not much area you can hit a quarterback. You’ve got to hit him in here (stomach/chest area), and that’s about it. You can’t hit him in the face and you can’t hit him below the waist.”
*Three position groups have been hurt with key starters missing time, but Brown was complimentary of offensive line coach Stacy Searels, wide receiver coach Lonnie Galloway and cornerbacks coach Dre’ Bly on having guys ready to step in and contribute.
Note: Jordan Tucker did not play last week at Virginia and was available for just 20 snaps at Duke. Josh Ezeudu missed UNC’s first two games. Wide receiver Beau Corrales has missed the last three games, and the secondary has been really banged up. In fact, none of the starting corners or safeties from the opener versus Syracuse even played at Duke.
“I really applaud our coaches for, Stacy Searels, losing (Joshua) Ezeudu early in the year and making it work,” Brown said. “He's really lost Jordan Tucker for the last two weeks, he's made it work. You start looking at wide receivers, Beau Corrales hasn't played in a long time and
Lonnie Galloway has done an outstanding job of getting Khafre Brown and Emery Simmons ready to play. So, you just step up, it is next man up.
“And then what happened to our secondary? None of the starters for the Syracuse game played on Saturday, but Patrice Rene and Dede Hollins played really well. So, Dré (Bly) did a really good job of getting those guys ready to play. And then you have to move Trey Morrison from nickel to safety and then you put Ja'Qurious Conley in it at nickel.
“So Jay Bateman, all those guys, are doing a really good job of doing what we talked about earlier in the year and that's cross-training and making sure we don't gripe about who's not out there, we just go play."
*UNC is in a strange stretch of the schedule that has the Tar Heels facing their four biggest and longest standing rivals in a row. It began with a win at home over NC State followed by a loss at Virginia and a win at Duke. Now, Wake visits Kenan. Brown expressed his thoughts before the stretch, so what does he think now about the challenges his team is enduring given they have an emotional game each week for a month?
"I think it has a lot to do with it. And again, it's life, we don't have any choice,” Brown said. “The best teams learn to play every week with intensity. Now, two of these three games we've got to substitute a lot of people, so we should be more fresh after those games. But still, it's the emotional build up for a State game and it's the emotional build up for a Duke game and it spends a lot out of your players.
“But, we're trying to tell them in life's lessons, a lot of bankruptcies come right after you have your best year and people get a little relaxed. Why do people not win championships year in and year out? Why did they win one one year and the next year, they're not quite as good? Well, it's partly because people all want to beat them and they circle them.
“But, the other thing is that you don't do all the little things quite as well right after you're satisfied and we can't be satisfied. We've got to coach them harder this week than we did last week and act like they lost the game very honestly."
*Storm Duck might be UNC’s best defensive player, but he’s now missed the last five games with a lower body injury. With just four games remaining and the fact that he can get the year back, how does that affect what UNC ends up doing with Duke over the remainder of the season?
“But the answer to your question would be it's a medical decision, it's a Storm decision and a family decision if he wants to come back and play,” Brown said. “And I can promise you it's killing him that he's not playing. So, if he gets a chance to play against Notre Dame, he'll do that. And the question will be, how ready will he be, and do you put him in as well as he was playing, even though these other guys are playing so well while he's been hurt?
“So, that all gets confusing, too. But right now we're so depleted in the secondary that we need all those guys back. We were so lucky to have Patrice back and that Dede Hollins, the light's really come on for him the last couple of weeks and he's had two very good weeks in a row."
*Notre Dame is in the ACC this season, the first time it’s ever played football as a member of a conference, and it’s likely the Irish will go back to Independent status on the gridiron when COVID moves on and norm is restored in college athletics. But after Notre Dame’s win over Clemson this past Saturday night, the Irish are atop the ACC standings and well positioned to make the ACC title game. What are Brown’s thoughts on this and the Irish being a part of the league this fall now that we’re two months into the season?
"(The year) 2020 is just different,” Brown said. “There will be books written about this crazy year and everything about it's different. David (Cutcliffe) and I were talking about it before the game, how lucky we all are to be playing. And then every time you turn on the news and see all the virus, it's out there again. I saw some word of a possible vaccine this morning. Please.
“Hopefully, our country can get back on track here some if we get a vaccine and I'm not sure what that means for all of us. But still, it's great progress. So to me, Notre Dame, we're lucky to have them associated with us this year. They are really good and good for them. And I think everybody that loves the ACC would like to see them join.
“I mean, that would be such a plus for us because it would raise the standard in our league like they have this year and make the rest of us fight to get to them and get to where Clemson is. And those two right now seem to be better than the rest of us. And that was a great game on Saturday night.”
*Jacob Turner contributed to this report.
