CHAPEL HILL – North Carolina Coach Mack Brown met with the media via zoom Monday morning for his weekly press conference in advance of Saturday’s game at Florida State and hit on a variety of topics.
Brown discussed what went well and not so well from the win over the Hokies, the Tar Heels' new lofty ranking, the memorable game versus FSU in 1997, and much more.
The Tar Heels are ranked No. 5 in the nation for the first time since 1997, which was Brown’s final season at UNC in his first stint at the helm. At 3-0, they will take on a Seminoles team that is 1-3 overall, 0-3 in the ACC.
UNC is coming off a 56-45 win over Virginia Tech while the Noles are coming off a 42-26 loss at Notre Dame.
Here is Brown’s complete press conference along with some notes and pulled quotes from what he had to say:
*UNC said last week it wouldn’t provide injury updates on Mondays anymore, but went ahead and gave some information at the outset of the presser: Storm Duck will not play at FSU but Ray Vohasek, Emery Simmons and Ja’Qurious Conley will be evaluated later in the week before a decision is made on their status for that game in Tallahassee. Note: We don't expect Duck will play in the next few weeks but he has not been ruled out for the season. He was not on the sidelines for UNC's win over Va. Tech.
*The FSU game was slated to kick at 7 pm and air on ESPN, but because of a COVID situation involving the Baylor-Oklahoma State matchup, the Tar Heels and Seminoles have been moved to 7:30 and will air on ABC. This will be UNC’s third consecutive week playing nationally on ABC.
*Being ranked in the top five for the first time in 23 years is a big deal to the UNC program. Brown even called it “cool.” What else did he have to say about it?
“It’s fun,” Brown said. “It’s good for recruiting, it’s good for our fans to have some bragging rights. We haven’t been rated for a long time this high. Does it mean anything? Nah, not really. I’ve always told the players, until the College Football Playoff polls come out, it will probably be in November this year, that’s the first time I even look at the polls. Because then, everybody has a resume, we know who’s good and who’s not.
“We’ve got a couple of teams right now everybody thinks are great and then the rest of us are a lot alike. It depends on injuries and who’s healthy enough to play and it depends on how you play that Saturday. So, we’re one of those teams.”
*UNC was 6-21 over the final 27 games of the Larry Fedora, which is why Brown was hired, but in 16 games, Brown has the Tar Heels ranked No. 5 and on a six-game win streak. The average score during the six-game streak is UNC 44.2, Opponents 17.7. The sweeping change at UNC has been quite fast.
“We are making progress. We’re ahead of schedule learning how to win,” Brown said. “We’re winning differently each weekend, which is something that’s important to note. The defense struggled some on Saturday against a really good Virginia Tech offense, and the offense stepped up and had its best day. That’s what you have to do to be able to win.”
*It shouldn’t come as any surprise that Brown is pleased with how his offense performed versus Virginia Tech. The Tar Heels amassed 656 total yards and scored 56 points.
“We had great balance, and that’s who we want to be,” Brown said. “It’s what we saw on Saturday. We had 186 yards rushing at halftime and 186 yards passing. Sam had a fantastic day. Oh my gosh, after the game I said, ‘Hey great game.’ He said, 'I threw that one low to Dyami (Brown).’ That’s Sam. He’s a perfectionist. He called the game well, he got us in the right plays, and he managed the entire game well.
“And the offensive line played by far their best game. They dominated the line of scrimmage. In fact, the offense dominated this game and that’s the reason we won the game.”
*Carolina was 5-for-5 with touchdowns in the red zone if you take away the final possession when the Heels took a knee as time expired. The Heels struggled consistently getting touchdowns in the red zone last season, especially on the ground.
“That’s an area that we really wanted to improve…,” Brown said. “When we were tying to score the guys were 5-for-5 for touchdowns.”
*The third quarter versus the Hokies was a nightmare for UNC. Tech scored 22 points and racked up 228 yards on 25 offensive plays. What went wrong?
“In the third quarter, we stayed on the field too long,” Brown said. “We gave up a couple of big plays and the onside kick was a killer because we were too wide, we weren’t lined up where we should have been… That kept us on the field for two complete drive, and we don’t have a lot of depth on defense and we’ve got a lot of inexperience on our defense. So that put us in a tough spot.”
*Carolina did not force a turnover and has just one on the season. Brown says this must change.
“We’re still not forcing turnovers on defense,” Brown said. “We dropped two balls that we could have had as interceptions, we’re not stripping the ball. We’ve got to do a better job in those areas. It’s amazing we’re 3-0 with as few turnovers as we’ve forced.”
*Another negative is the high volume of penalties once again for the Tar Heels. They had 10 for 87 yards versus the Hokies, and now have 29 for 274 yards on the season. This also must be fixed.
“We continue to have too many penalties,” Brown said. “We have got to clean that up. That’s 10 penalties three straight weeks. We keep screaming, we keep harping, but it’s the same old thing, so it needs to get fixed.”
*MVPs of the Virginia Tech game:
-Offense: The o-line, which paved the way for 56 points, 656 yards and 31 first downs on only 66 offensive plays, which is an average of 9.9 yards per snap. “The coaches voted the entire offensive line as the players of the game on offense.”
-Defense: Sophomore cornerback Kyler McMichael had four tackles and two PBUs. “He was out there by himself on an island and stood up,” Brown said. “They only completed one ball on him.”
-Special Teams: Kickoff specialist Jonathan Kim has touchbacks on 18 of his 20 kickoffs so far.
*The 1997 game between UNC and FSU was a big topic Monday morning. It’s the last time UNC played a football game ranked in the top five, a span of 266 games. The Heels lost that night, 20-3, but it remains a celebrated day for the program in some respects because it was so close to cracking the college football ceiling.
While the current Tar Heels are in the top-10 for just the second week of their Carolina careers, the ’97 club had spent two years mostly in the top-10 leading up to that big game, so it wasn’t new to them. That said, Brown was asked to compare the teams, so he did.
“That team was deeper and more talented, especially on defense,” Brown replied. “We had been good for a long time. We’re ahead of where I thought we’d be at this time, but we still don’t have enough depth, we still don’t have enough experience in key positions on defense.
“Offensively, we’ve been around for a while. The guys have all played. There’s no new starters that you just throw out there and you have to play. But defensively, we’re not there yet. We needed spring practice, we needed the Charlotte game, we needed to develop some depth and we haven’t gotten that.
“I think the biggest difference in the two right now is we’re probably more explosive now offense than we were back in ’97, but the defense at that time was the best defense in the country. They were dominating games and not letting anybody score.”