CHAPEL HILL – North Carolina’s coordinators met with the media Monday morning via zoom to discuss more about what transpired in the loss at Virginia on Saturday night, their units and to look ahead to Saturday’s game at Duke.

UNC is coming off a 44-41 loss to the Cavaliers on a night the defense struggled stopping the run but the offense was prolific, especially the passing game. Sam Howell threw for 443 yards and four touchdowns and Dyami Brown caught 11 passes for 240 yards and three scores.

Here are videos of the full pressers for Phil Longo and Jay Bateman plus some notes and pulled quotes from what they had to say:

*Starting right tackle Jordan Tucker did not play Saturday night because of an injury, but Longo said he practiced Monday morning and expects him to play this weekend at Duke.

*UNC had the ball first-and-goal at Virginia’s 2-yard-line with 12 seconds left in the first half on Saturday night but didn’t score any points. The Tar Heels were out of timeouts, so the play call was screen pass to slot receiver Dazz Newsome that didn’t work. Sam Howell’s pass was more a lateral which Newsome couldn’t handle, the ball fell to the ground as a fumble instead of an incomplete pass, and the clock expired by the time it was recovered. Longo was asked to explain the play call.

“We got down there and we took two shots at the end zone, we had to manage the clock a little bit,” Longo explained. “That play is really, I take responsibility just because I've got to do a better job maybe of coaching our quarterback on that play. We wanted to get the ball out to Dazz (Newsome) if they were in man coverage. We went motion and they drove their defender across the formation to run with him.

“We wanted to change direction to change direction and get him back out on the perimeter and throw him a swing. It wound up being a backward lateral, that's not this kind of play. The play is just to throw him a swing off a little bit of a run action and let him, because he's such a great athlete, let him race to the pylon.”

*Staying on that, an option could have been to go with a power run, especially with running back Javonte Williams’ ability to move defenders in tight situations. How long would it have taken to run such a play, and could the Heels have done so unsuccessfully and still stopped the clock with a spiked ball to either run another play or kick a field goal?

“You can get a run play off, if it's a smart defense, if you don't score that's the issue and they tackle you at the three or the two or the run, they're gonna sit on you,” Longo said. “They're not gonna let you up. And there's the danger of not being able to get up to clock the ball or get another play off. So, the definite thought process there was to throw the ball to the end zone and take two shots.

“And then, on that third one, I rolled the dice on the motion back throw thinking that we could make a decision on fourth down. That's really how we got to it, that's what happened. There was not a thought to run the football at that time because of the clock situation.”

*Longo and his play call at the end of the first half was a hot topic on social media and message boards. Most coaches say they don’t pay attention to the outside world and some admit they do. Mack Brown does to a degree, as he comments on what’s being said and written every once in a while. What about Longo?

“Truthfully, I get on social media to recruit and that's about it,” he said. “I watched George Seifert win the Super Bowl and then, a year later, they fired him. I think there's always somebody who's not happy with what you do. So, no, when you start letting outside things, and we tell our players this all the time, if you let outside distractions affect what you do, what happens is it starts affecting the job you're doing inside the building.

“I've been doing this long enough now to know that, short of winning a national championship on a every year basis, there's going to be someone out there who's not happy with what you do.”

*UNC has struggled stopping the run in three of the last four games, allowing a combined 711 rushing yards to Virginia Tech, Florida State and Virginia. The Wahoos amassed 210 yards on Saturday night, as the Heels once again struggled with a running quarterback, which was also the case versus the Hokies and Seminoles.

“We didn’t play very well,” Bateman said. “We didn’t handle some of the shifts and motions and it kind of got us into a vanilla defense a lot. And when they got us where they knew where we were going to be, they blocked us really good. I thought once we kind of settled down and got back to pressure, I thought we were better. That kind of what schematically what happened.

“And I thought our tackling wasn’t very good. They finished runs on us, they were four-for-four on fourth down. The got themselves in manageable third downs, which we said going into the game couldn’t happen because of the quarterback run.

“So, they finished runs because we didn’t tackle great and got themselves in advantageous third and fourth downs. We knew they were going to go for it on fourth down, that’s who they are and we didn’t handle it very well.”

*Senior linebacker Chazz Surratt hasn’t posted the same kind of numbers he did a year ago when he was first-team All-ACC or that might match his preseason All-America projections. Some of his PFF grades have been quite low, too. Surratt still leads the team with 42 tackles and has four sacks on the season. So what are Bateman’s thoughts about the narrative regarding Surratt and how he’s played this season?

“I don't really think he's struggled,” Bateman said. “He's been ACC Linebacker of the Week twice. I think people are blocking him, I think people are making sure he can't just go out and win the game and, when they don't, I think he makes a lot of plays. Sometimes we think Chazz gets dressed in the phone booth and puts a cape on. Chazz has played well, so I don't see it that way my man.”

*Bateman has repeatedly talked about the need to develop depth on the defensive interior line, and in the NC State game he played quite a few of the reserves, including true freshman Myles Murphy, who was on the field for 24 snaps that day. But at UVA, Murphy played 13 snaps and nobody else outside of the regular three-man rotation of Ray Vohasek, Tomari Fox and Jahlil Taylor got into the game.

None of the reserve middle linebackers played, either. The Heels struggled getting off the field late during UVA’s 15-play drive that consumed 9:02 off the clock. Did the defense get tired?

“I didn't think we got tired per se, but I do think we should have played those young guys more,” Bateman said Every week's a little bit different. Every week's a little bit more, how much we're doing, how much they're doing, some of that stuff.

“So, I think that factors into a piece of it too, but I do think we need to play those younger kids more.”

*Trey Morrison has been an amazing player for the Tar Heels in his three seasons moving around to different positions sometimes on the same drives. He’s one of the unit’s smarter players and leaders, but he was flagged for an unsportsmanlike conduct penalty Saturday night that generated quite a bit of attention. What are Bateman’s thoughts of the play and call?

“I think it's the classic, in the game of football when you retaliate, you usually get flagged,” he said. “Trey knows it wasn't very smart.”

*Jacob Turner contributed to this report.