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CHARLOTTE – In the first two years of Mack Brown's second stint with North Carolina, a staple with his teams have been getting off to fast starts. In Brown's first two seasons back with the Tar Heels, his teams scored in the first quarter in 21 of 23 games against FBS teams.
However, this year's rendition of the Heels has struggled coming out of the locker room, particularly in the last three games.
In Carolina's previous three contests against FBS teams, the Heels have been outscored by a combined 49-0 in the first quarter. In those games, UNC has only gained a combined 73 yards of offense on 34 plays, while its defense has given up 489 yards on 48 plays.
Additionally, in the last three outings against FBS opponents, North Carolina has had ten drives that started in the first quarter. Of those, seven ended in a three-and-out, with the longest drive being four plays for 26 yards against NC State.
With UNC’s offense averaging three plays and 7.3 yards per first-quarter drive, and its defense giving up an average drive of nine plays for 54 yards in the first quarter during this stretch, quarterback Sam Howell says the young Tar Heels must adopt a change in mentality to have early game success.
"I think it's all about our mindset coming out,” Howell said. "You have to find a way to an edge to be ready to come out and compete. Come out with that killer mindset. We found ourselves with some slow starts a lot of times this year. We failed to recover from those, and we had another slow one today, which can't happen if you expect to win the game."
Naturally, UNC lost all three contests to Pittsburgh, NC State, and South Carolina.
Howell hit on something regarding Carolina’s having trouble overcoming slow starts, or at least taking a while to do so.
Since returning to UNC, Mack Brown is 1-7 when his team doesn't produce any first-quarter points, so getting off to a fast start was emphasized all week in preparation for South Carolina. Yet, with the urgency placed on just that, the Gamecocks scored two touchdowns on a pair of three-play drives that consumed 93 and 76 yards.
UNC’s staff is still searching for the solution to this problem.
"Yeah, we talked about it all week," said Brown. "We talked about it this morning, 'Come on, guys, we gotta get the quick start, we gotta get better. We practice every morning; this should be our time of the day to play.'
“Then offensively, we moved the ball right down the field, and then we have a bust in the offensive line with them, and we turn an outside linebacker loose on third down and four, so you can't do that. So obviously, I can't answer that. If I had the answer, I would've already had it fixed." With spring practice approaching, the staff hopes another year of maturity for some young players will help fix some of the Tar Heels' woes. The issue with Carolina isn't a matter of talent but the collective mentality of the team, they say.
When the gifted players Brown has bought to Chapel Hill understand and adopt the previous two teams' mindset, at least with respect to opening games, Carolina should make on-field progress and match the advancements made off the field.
