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CHAPEL HILL – North Carolina Coach Mack Brown met with the media following practice Wednesday morning to discuss how his team is doing prepare for Wofford’s visit Saturday, senior day, a few highly productive Tar Heels playing their final home games, Beau Corrales, recruiting, and more.
Above is the full video of Brown’s Q&A session, and below are some notes and pulled quotes from what he had to say:
*Wofford has run variations of the option for years and still does. It’s part of the program’s culture, so in a week in which the Tar Heels will be a heavy favorite versus the 1-9 Terriers, who are an FCS program, Brown’s team is challenged with having to prepare for an offense few schools run.
“This year they’ve had a lot of injuries,” Brown said. “They’ve had some close games. Like us, they haven’t had the year they want, but they’re playing hard. They line up right and they do what they’re supposed to do.
“They run some option, which is kind of a pain for us defensively to have to work on, because it’s just something that not a lot of people are running anymore. They run the split-back option, and they’ll move their quarterback a lot.”
*With Sam Howell a gametime decision Saturday morning whether he will play or not, the focus this week has been on getting backups Jacolby Criswell and Drake Maye ready. The staff isn’t just working on them for this game, but some decisions eventually must be made regarding which player will take the keys moving forward. So how has their week gone so far?
“Sam is so tough, and he’s a team guy so he’s going to want to play,” Brown said. “He also doesn’t want to go out there unless he’s ready to play, because he doesn’t want to hurt the team. So that will be totally up to Sam and the doctors and his family of whether he would play or not…
“Drake and Jacolby have got an awareness that they may fully be starting their first game and be out there. And they’ve had a really good week, but we’ve also challenged the rest of the guys to play well around them, pick it up and help them, and make sure that they’re ready to go and have a chance to be successful.
“And then, obviously, with those two, we would run the offense for each one of them that we feel like that they’ll be running in the future. The offensive staff will pick out the plays that they feel like each of those would do the best, and then they’ll do it.
“I haven’t decided yet, if Sam doesn’t play, how we’re going to rotate the quarterbacks. I wanted to watch practice all week, I wanted to see who’s more comfortable having the best week’s practice before we decided who started, and if and how we would rotate.”
*Brown said Wednesday that wide receiver Beau Corrales will walk with the seniors Saturday but could still return next season, which would be his super senior year. Corrales has been dealing with a slow-healing injury but reached a point where he could play this weekend, or next week at NC State.
Corrales could play in these last three games and use this season as his redshirt year, as well. He played as a true freshman in 2018, gets last season back, and with the four-game maximum to maintain the year, he could redshirt this season even if he plays a ton over the next three games.
“He’s had the three procedures, he practiced some early and was sore,” Brown said. “So, he’s actually practiced this week, and I asked yesterday, do you think he will play this weekend, or try to play? He was going to try and play against Pittsburgh, and he was still sore some last week. And conditioning on top of all the other stuff.
“But he looked like he practiced well today. I will ask again today. The medical staff said they wanted to watch him practice today, (wide receivers) Coach (Lonnie) Galloway wanted to watch him practice today to see if there’s a chance that he could play either this week or next week.
“Even though he’s missed the whole year, he was such a valuable player for us. We talk about losing Dazz (Newsome) and we talk about losing Dyami (Brown) and the two running backs, we never talk about losing Beau. And Beau was a really important factor in our receiving corps.
“So, I think he will be well. I hope it’s this weekend. I wouldn’t think he would play a whole lot because he hasn’t played in so long… He can still play in the last three games, be redshirted, appeal, and then come back next year. And that’s what everybody’s kind of looking at.”
*One interesting note Brown brought up is that the early enrollees in January, of which there are nine, can participate in bowl practices.
“If the ones sign with us that are planning on signing, the rule is, if they have finished their school and graduated, they could actually come and participate in bowl practices before they come in January.
“We didn’t do that last year, but that would be something we’re looking at this year if the guys sign that we expect to sign – it’ll be a tremendous class – and that would be a boost for us and them to come in and get a few extra days of practice. So we will look at that.”
