CHAPEL HILL – Mack Brown is sort of turning back the clock this spring.

North Carolina’s football coach is going back to a prior time when hard-hitting, bloody spurting practices were the norm in the sport, certainly in the spring.

College teams can’t run two-a-days anymore, and in the fall, there is a limit to how much they can scrimmage. But in the spring, Brown has the Tar Heels cracking away at each other, and the intended payoff is to satisfy the mantra of the 2023 Tar Heels: Nine isn’t enough.

UNC won nine games last season, and Brown rightfully lauded the accomplishment, but the mission now is to get into the next realm, the 10-plus realm which is where legitimate contenders break through creeping closer to the highest college gridiron dimension.

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“We’ve just felt like we’ve got to play the game more this spring than we have in the past because that’s the only way that we can get better from where we are to where we need to go,” Brown said following practice Tuesday, the team’s seventh of the spring.

Anyone who has paid even the slightest attention to Carolina football understands the program’s needs mostly nest in areas of physicality. Brown even noted last week a narrative about UNC being “soft,” but didn’t rebuke those sentiments. Instead, he said the program must get better, so the narrative simply wafts away almost unnoticed.

Tackling in tight spaces, tackling in the open field, second and third hits on ball carriers should be enough to crash them to the earth. Pass rush, quarterback pressures, and simply making plays. That’s defense.

Run blocking in the red zone or in short-yardage situations, second-level blocking, pass protection, running hard through holes, taking care of the football, and making plays. That’s offense.

“We’ve had really competitive practices where we’re tackling a lot, hitting more than we ever have…,” Brown said. “We’re doing a lot more physical stuff. We’ve got to tackle better, rush the passer better, we’ve got to protect better. So, we can only do that full speed.”

A movement about a decade ago went away from physicality in practices and steered more toward timing and finesse. Naturally, the sport itself has gone that way. Teams use more space, they don’t run the ball down opponents’ throats, and few defenses put up walls that cannot be scaled.

During Brown’s first stint at UNC from 1988-1997, his teams hit a lot in practice, and the Tar Heels eventually developed into one of the more physical teams in the nation his last two seasons. They also happened to finish ranked in the top 10 both seasons.

And that’s where Brown intends to take UNC again. Nine wins was a stepping stone, much like the 10-3 campaign in 1993 and 8-4 one in 1994. Carolina got tougher, and Carolina won more.

Might players get dinged up more, maybe even a few injured? Indeed. But to make the next step, Brown and his staff believe this is the best approach.

“It’s a lot more now,” he said, referencing the hitting now versus the last four seasons. “And the biggest part is, number one, we’ve got more depth, even though there’s some guys injured… And the second part is, how do you get from good to great? How do you get from nine (wins) to the rest of them?

“And we feel the issues that we’ve had, we can’t do a better job against tackles for loss and sacks unless we’ve got some live stuff.”

It also helps with personnel decisions.

Teams that don’t hit much often don’t really reveal much about individuals or units until they are a couple of games in the season. And with the other mantra of this offseason about self-evaluating every nuance of the program, the staff will know what they need to about each player on the roster.

And that Carolina’s first four games are against South Carolina (Charlotte), Appalachian State, Minnesota, and at Pittsburgh, they can’t afford to wait-and-see exactly who can do what. The time is now.

“It’s really going to help us,” Brown said. “And it’s going to press the envelop because we open up against South Carolina, which is a rally hard game… We don’t have time to grow into the season, we’re going to have to be ready to play like we’ve had preseason games.”

No preseason games, but a hard-hitting spring to separate those who can be trusted in games from those who can’t is part of Brown’s process in winning more than nine next fall.