CHAPEL HILL – North Carolina is past the mid-week part of preparation for Saturday’s game versus No. 23 NC State at Kenan Stadium, and that means Mack Brown was made available to the media following practice.

The UNC coach hit on multiple topics about his No. 14 Tar Heels, including more about what they learned from the loss at Florida State, missed tackles, getting more young kids on the field on defense, the interior defensive line, signs of whether a team is ready or not during the week, if rivalries affect recruiting, and much, much more.

Here is the full video of Brown’s Q&A session with some notes and pulled quotes from what he had to say:

*Brown continues to push the message that his club understands they weren’t the No. 5 team in the nation and that they weren’t tough enough to finish their comeback attempt last Saturday night. This is obviously an enormous part of this program’s growth and goes back to wanting to buy a house in the elite neighborhood and not rent one, an example he gave last week. So, Brown opened the Q&A session hitting on the No. 5 and toughness thoughts.

“Looking back, as we told the players, we weren't ready to be the No. 5 team in the country week after week because we didn't play well enough to do that,” Brown said. “They're aware of that, they know that. I also know we were tough enough and competitive enough and good enough to come from behind in a game last week, but we didn't finish them.

“And that was an issue last year, so we've got to finish those games to get where we want to go with our program."

*The Tar Heels and Wolfpack will meet each other this weekend for just the third time while both teams are ranked in the AP poll. Three in 110 meetings isn’t much, but that’s where things are this week, and Brown believes it’s good for the state and is indicative of how high school football in North Carolina continues to improve.

“I think it's great. I didn't realize how few times both teams have been ranked,” he said. “But, as I said on Monday, I think it's such a credit to the high school coaches and high school football in the state when this game is important and both teams are ranked. Because a lot of the players from this state go to these two schools.

“So, I think it's really, really good for the Triangle, it's good for the state of North Carolina and especially good for high school football."

*Brown said Monday he thought his team was too “comfortable” going into Tallahassee. He also said he had a sense of it during last week. So when can a coach tell if his team is moving forward with the right mindset to play a game and what are the signs to gauge their readiness?

“Usually, if you have energy and you're physical and you're doing all the obvious things right, you've got low pads, guys are throwing and catching the ball and they're not dropping it, they're not missing assignments, we have officials out here everyday, they're limiting penalties,” Brown explained. “You can tell those things, it just is really obvious. I told them today again, 'Football's simple, it's a very simple game. People are very complicated.' Me, coaches, staff members, players.

“And trying to get all these complicated people to be on the same page every Saturday is not as easy as you would think it is. And the ones that handle COVID, the ones that handle their emotions, the ones that are ready to play every week, they're the ones that win the most games. I've tried to be as honest with the guys as I can and say, 'If you get ready to play, you're gonna win more games than you lose and you'll have a better chance to play well and play 100 percent.'

“But, you can't drop passes in practice and then expect to go make them in a game. You just can't. So, we dropped three passes at the end of the game the other day, did we drop those on Thursday? Did we drop them on Wednesday? There's no question that, if you catch them during the week, you've got a better chance to catch them in a game. We haven't missed a field goal all week, we missed one last Thursday and then we missed one in the game.

“So, I do think that the way you practice and the confidence that you gain through the way you practice during the week does transfer to the field."

As for this week, Brown said the Tar Heels have been “amazing” in how they’ve responded this week to the FSU loss and in preparing for the Wolfpack.

*It sounds like more players will get on the field this weekend for the Tar Heels, especially on defense. Only 18 Heels on that side of the ball got snaps at FSU, with just 15 playing seven or more snaps and only 13 played more than nine. Four Heels played every snap and eight played all but four or fewer. It should also be noted, however, that the Seminoles only ran 56 offensive plays. So many of the snap counts for starters were what they’d usually be in a more typical game when an opponent runs 70-75 plays.

That said, Brown wants to get more of the younger Heels on the field moving forward.

“We’re still thin. We’ve had some people banged up and we’re still not playing enough people,” Brown said. “Last year, we got better on defense when we started trusting a lot of the young ones and started playing them. We were more fresh in the fourth quarter and the third quarter. We’ve got to do that. Our coaches are trying to win so badly they don’t want to put somebody in and don’t think he’s ready, well we’ve got to.

“We’re at a stage in our program where we need to play the great young athletes that we’re recruiting just put them out there and let them go and have them grow up and at some point it will work for us.”

*UNC’s interior defensive line has been a regular topic since fall camp started. It was the biggest concern in early August as it came in with the least experience and proven depth. Four games in, what has Brown been most pleased with about the interior DL and what concerns him the most about the group?

“They’re paying hard,” Brown replied. “Ray (Vohasek) missed a game, and he missed a week-and-a-half of practice, so he probably wasn’t in great condition down at Florida State, so he’ll be better this week. Tomari’s (Fox) playing hard, Jahlil Taylor’s playing hard. And we still haven’t gotten some of the younger guys in enough… We’d like to play more of those defensive linemen. We’d like to play Des Evans more, we’d like to play Kaimon Rucker more just to get those guys going.

“They’re trying hard, but we’re keeping the two or three in the game too long and they get beaten down over four games. And especially, we’ve been practicing since August 6. It seems like we’ve had a year-and-a-half of football and played four games. So, that’s just kind of where we are here. So, we need to play more.

“The other thing is we’ve lost some gap control inside and had some gashes on some runs, so we need to do a better job with our gap control moving forward.”

*There’s a common belief among fans and many in the media that the results of rivalry games significantly affect recruiting. Brown doesn’t really buy much into that sentiment.

“I've never thought so,” Brown said. “I think guys pick where they want to go and go. And they always feel like, when they come, they're gonna win. And we've already got our classes for this year, we're already looking hard, both, all four of these schools that are playing for the next four weeks are already looking hard for the '22's that we're gonna offer. So, I've never felt like it.

“Winning does, everybody wants to be a part of a winning program. I've never thought winning a game does because these kids are starting to choose sides really early. So, they have an idea where they want to do, Deana can tell you, when they're sophomores now. They brought me a '24 to look at the other day, I said, 'He's not shaving, he has no classes yet, we have no transcript, come on man. Let's at least wait till he shaves and has a year of school.'"

*Jacob Turner contributed to this report.