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CHAPEL HILL – Mack Brown believes last year’s North Carolina team read too many preseason press clippings and took them way too seriously.
That, as much or more than anything else, is why he thinks the 2021 Tar Heels lacked consistency in a variety of measures. So, as the UNC coach works toward unveiling his fourth Carolina team since returning in late 2018, the mission for enhanced program DNA includes, and quite frankly begins with, an improved mindset.
“Last year’s team was up and down,” Brown said. “I saw it in the spring, I saw it in the fall, it frustrated me. My responsibility is to put a team on the field for our university and for our fans that plays their heart out every week, and I didn’t see that last year.”
So, long before the Tar Heels hit the field for spring practice in early March, Brown and his staff began the process of influencing a more uplifting, spirited, and deeper mindset based on improvement, competition, increased physicality, and an across-board devotion to playing to the decals on their helmets.
And this isn’t generic rah-rah stuff here, this is more embedded in the workouts, the daily comportment of football affairs, and the grind be it in the weight room, film room, or practice field, with or without coaches present.
Junior linebacker Cedric Gray has seen a distinct difference from a year ago.
“I would say when (last) offseason first started, it was kind of (inconsistent),” he said. “It was a lot of coming off what happened last year as far as the winter workouts went. That’s what we kind of talked about, ‘hey we don’t want to relive that.’”
Last offseason, the Tar Heels were one of the sexy programs in college football. They were coming off a competitive loss to Texas A&M in the Orange Bowl, had one of the leading contenders for the Heisman Trophy in quarterback Sam Howell, and the story of Brown quickly rebuilding a downtrodden program were easy storylines to push to a national audience.
The problem is, too many of the Heels bought into the hype, and it affected the internal motor. That cannot be an issue this time around. Carolina is coming off a highly disappointing 6-7 season, Howell was out of the Heisman race by the end of the season-opening loss at Virginia Tech last September, and the narrative about Brown has shifted dramatically in just 12 months.
So, a new attitude was being pushed from day one, enhanced by a coaching change on defense. Gone is Jay Bateman and his buddy-buddy style, and in is Gene Chizik and his business-first approach. It also helps that Chizik has a national championship ring as a head coach at Auburn in 2010 and defensive coordinator under Brown at Texas in 2005.
“Probably the first day of pads,” Gray said, when asked when he first noticed a true different in attitude within the team.
Going live with full contact forced the hand of everyone. A football player not going at it with the right mental gusto will be fully exposed when everything is full speed, or “live” as the players call it.
“It made people kind of get more of an edge,” Gray said.
Having an edge means having a purpose. And that requires the right mindset.
“You just start seeing we couldn’t handle success last year,” Brown said. “So, teams that handle success get better, and you’ve got to do that. So, what we’ve done is gone back and we’re not missing anything. We’re all over it with every class. Everything that we did the first year that we thought we did last year, but I’m not sure we did it as well.
“We’ve gone back and doing it again. They have not had a bad practice.”
That is because the Tar Heels have a revamped mindset, to which their coach has been quite pleased.
