CHAPEL HILL – North Carolina Coach Mack Brown held his first game-week press conference of the season Monday, as the Tar Heels are just five days away from hosting Syracuse to kick off the 2020 campaign.
The presser was done via zoom, though Brown was at the podium in the press room at the Kenan Football Center, as he normally would be if not for the precautions stemming from the ongoing COVID-19 situation.
Here are some notes and quotes from what Brown had to say:
*Everyone in the ACC is being tested for COVID three times a week. The Tar Heels were tested Monday morning and will be again following Wednesday morning’s practice and again Friday afternoon. However, they may not get Friday’s test results back until 9 am Saturday, which could cause some scrambling for the coaches in case they elarn on game day some key players are forced to sit. This could be particularly problematic for teams playing noon games, which is the case for the Tar Heels and Orange this weekend.
“It will definitely be different,” Brown said.
*Teams are normally allowed 25 practices before their opener, and with the Heels having practiced 21 times so far, they will hit the 25 number later this week. With the opeenr eight days later than originally expected, the staff spread out the practices some since the team had more time than usual before the opener, plus there was that four-day break when the university suspended athletic activities in August.
*Carolina has received quite a bit of preseason hype. The Tar Heels are ranked No. 18 in the AP poll and No. 19 in the coaches’ poll, but Brown warned those rankings really don’t mean much.
“We’ve had a lot of hype since the bowl game,” Brown said. “A lot of people have been talking about how much better we’re going to be, and how good we’re going to be. And we’ll see now is that hype is for real? Are we going to be that much improved or was it the momentum of last year and we’ve lot that momentum now. So, it’s time to play someone else and figure out who we are.
“I’ve talked to the players about preseason rankings are just hype, they’re about last year, they’re not about what you’ve accomplished this year. So, we need to step up and play well and get this season started on a positive note.”
*Special teams is an area that has concerned Brown all offseason. “We’ve got to be improved in that area,” he said. A positive for UNC is that Brown believes that group has gotten better.
He has been quite vocal about the need to improve in all areas of special teams, which is one reason he brought in Jovan Dewitt last winter. So, does Brown believe the units as a whole have improved?
“I do believe we’ve improved,” Carolina’s coach said. “We have worked so hard every day. In fact our situation scrimmage on Saturday was large majority special teams. And it was live. We didn’t hit our punt and kickoff returners. But everything else was live. And we still haven’t made a decision on our kicker yet. Both have done well.”
*The placekicking battle between 2019 starter Noah Ruggles and Furman graduate transfer Grayson Atkins has been one of the more intense ones since the team gathered this summer. A week ago, Brown said neither player had separated from the other. That has somewhat changed, although just slightly.
“It is true that Grayson Atkins has got a really strong leg and he gets it so high when he kicks it, so as of today, he would be our kicker on Saturday,” Brown said. “But we’ll probably make that decision on Thursday after practice.”
*Brown watched the college games that were played this past weekend and learned quite a bit from them that will help this coming weekend.
“I watched every one of them, and that’s all I did,” Brown said. “No. 1, there were a lot of mistakes. So I think we’re going to see the effects of no spring practice and this roller-coaster ride we’ve all been on coming into this year with play on the field some. So hopefully that doesn’t happen with us on Saturday.
“But we’ve talked to coaches that have already coached games. And it was interesting, the three things that have come up and we felt them in our scrimmages: it’s harder to get your substitutions lined up especially for special teams because you’ve extended the box. And players are much more spread out and it’s harder to communicate with your mask on. So we’re realy working hard to try to figure out, can we get a clear mask where the players can read your lips if they can’t hear you. And you’ve still got some noise because you’re playing some music between plays, you’re playing some crowd noise. So when we think there’s no noise, there actually is some.
“Communication for substitutions, especially special teams, and communication with the mask on is something that’s been different. The other one that we noticed and we didn’t feel like was a big issue at first, but not in watching it after we’ve talked to people: you can’t hear the whistles of the officials, the handheld whistles, near as well as you could hear the whistles before. So the coaches are telling us that it’s really hard for the players to stop on the whistle when you can’t hear it.”
*The only time the Tar Heels had a noon kickoff last season was in the bowl game, but their opener this weekend kicks at noon. Typically, teams prefer playing later in the day because it’s what fans want and usually lends to more of a buzz in stadiums, but given the current COVID circumstances, Brown is okay with playing the early game.
“Last year we didn’t want them because we didn’t think it was best for our fans,” he said. “Well, until we get fans coming, I’d like to get up and play. So our fans will be in front of the TV at noon. If they told me right now we weren’t going to have fans in our stands for the rest of the year, I’d like every game at noon, so our guys can get up, go play and then have the rest of the day to be around their families and enjoy the other games.
"So I’m not concerned at all about a noon game with no fans. Now if it’s fans, I’d a lot rather it be night games because it’s cooler and they have all day to enjoy each other and prepare. But that’s when we had fans in the stands.”
