CHAPEL HILL – North Carolina Coach Mack Brown met with the media via zoom following Wednesday’s practice to discuss the Tar Heels’ game this weekend versus Virginia Tech plus a variety of other things about his team and program.
The No. 19 Hokies and No. 8 Tar Heels kickoff Saturday at noon at Kenan Stadium.
Here is Brown’s full 38-minute post-practice interview along with some notes and pulled quotes from what he had to say:
*Brown said the players on the roster are in a unique situation as none of them have been on a ranked team before until a few weeks ago and this is the first time they will play a game in which they and their opponent are ranked. They have not played in a game of this national magnitude yet.
“The guys are excited about playing a good ranked team,” Brown said. “It’s different from where we were, but now we’re in a position where we’re a ranked team playing a ranked team, and that didn’t happen to us last year, we were never ranked. So the guys are having to learn to handle that better.”
*Senior corner Patrice Rene suffered a torn ACL in the second game of last season versus Miami and has basically been out ever since. Sophkmore corner Cam Kelly suffered a torn ACL versus Clemson three weeks after Rene’s injury and was also lost for the season. Both have taken a long time to recover because of the limitations afforded them due to the pandemic-related shutdowns. But Brown said both players will be available this weekend versus the Hokies.
“Their rehab was delayed because of COVID because they couldn’t be at the office and couldn’t work with our training staff,” Brown said. “They are better now, I do think they’ll both play this weekend, really for the first time. So, it gives them a chance to play more. Usually it takes about nine months for a knee and with theirs it took more like a year just because of the lack of being able to work out with our training staff and our strength staff like they wanted to.”
*Brown is quite pleased with his freshman class. Des Evans, Myles Murphy, Kaimon Rucker and Ja’Qurious Conley all played important snaps in last Saturday’s game at Boston College. Josh Downs got some reps, as well. The coach went out of his way Wednesday to discuss more about the newbies.
“This freshman class is special. I think next year’s is probably better that’s coming in, if we’ll get all of the guys that we’ve got committed to us,” Brown said. “Jeremy (Sharpe) says a lot of people ask about names. K.J. Bingley-Jones is up to 310 and he’s walking and he’s exercising but he will not be back until spring, but we expect him to be a really good player.
“Clyde Pinder broke his fingers, broke his hand, so he’s working his way back and he’s doing some good things in practice. Myles Murphy, Kaimon Rucker, Des Evans, Tony Grimes, Ja’Quarious Conley, those guys are all playing already. Josh Downs has played a little bit on offense, we’ve just got a lot more guys back on offense than we had on defense.
“And one of the things that puts you in a tough spot is you’re excited about your new guys, but by not playing Charlotte, we missed a lot of snaps. So, we’ve got guys in the Boston College game that haven’t played before at the end of the game trying to win the game. So, we’re trying to develop depth for the season but at the same time still trying to win the game with all these young guys.”
To his point, Murphy, Evans and Rucker were on the field when BC started its last drive of the game. Also out there was Welton Spottsville, a true sophomore at nickel who played wide receiver last year.
*Patience in the passing game has been a big topic all week, as Brown, offensive coordinator Phil Longo and quarterback Sam Howell have discussed it at length. The question is, how does a team practice patience with respect to the deep ball in practice?
“When you start talking about offense, the offense got so much credit in the offseason about, they’re going to be so much better next year,” Brown said. “Well, they were good last year, and we played two good defensive teams. So, I really think the thing that you have to do is just continue to say, ‘here's what they're giving us, if you're going to beat somebody deep and they're staying way back, you've just got outrun them or you've got to use play action to draw them up and get it over their head,’ instead of just trying to please everybody and score every time.
“And there's absolutely no doubt that we've changed expectations in a short period of time. And people last year were hoping we’ll win, now they're expecting us to win. People last year were impressed when we moved the ball and scored. We scored 31 points in the opening ballgame and we shut it down with eight to 10 minutes left to go in the game and people are griping that we didn't score enough.
“So, it is what it is and these young people read and they hear. Their families talking to them about, ‘man, why aren't we scoring more points’ and ‘why isn’t Dazz getting the ball and why isn’t so and so getting the ball? Why didn't he get it more?’”
*Sam Howell said Tuesday the players are using last season’s six-overtime loss at Virginia Tech as fuel for this weekend, but how does Brown see such things? Some coaches want their teams to generate energy through a pay-back mindset while others would rather they worry only about themselves and what’s in front of them. Brown?
“We’re about facts,” Brown replied. “We just try to tell them the truth and exactly what happened. And the truth is these two teams in this game have been really, really close the last two years and give them credit they’ve won the games. The two years before that were blowouts.
“I like to look at history, I like to look at who we are and what we’ve done. And I told the guys, ‘If we were ready to have won the game at Virginia Tech last year we would have won it.’ We were ready to win at Boston College in a similar situation. But we weren’t ready at Pitt, we weren’t ready for whatever reason. And I told them, ‘If we’re ready this weekend, we’ll do our best and win the game, if we’re not then we’ll go back and get ready for Florida State and move forward.’
“Our program is really a little bit publicly ahead of where I think it is. We’ve still got some work to do, we’ve still got some youth. We’ve gotten a lot of credit. I’m still not sure we know who we are yet. So, we’ve got to improve and we’ve got to continue to work.
“I don’t think there’s anything wrong with – I look at their first two games, I look at our first two games, I look at the stats from the last two years even though we weren’t here two years ago, I look at the scores, I look at the players, I really think the more information they have the more the more prepared they are for the game.”
*UNC has not played football games on consecutive weekends since the end of last November, a span of 45 weeks. How important is it for the Tar Heels to now get into a routine and experience a sense of normalcy?
“It really does, that was the strangest thing to be off three weeks,” Brown said. “I thought we handled it as well as we could, whoever knows. We still haven't played consistently well on offense and we've talked about being more patient. Maybe even more than that, we haven't finished drives. We've started good drives, we haven't finished enough on them. We've messed something up with penalties or a sack, and sacks and penalties are drive stoppers. Those are really hard to overcome.
“So, I don't think there's anything as important as playing. You can practice and practice and practice and you can put yourself in a position where you're trying to create urgency. There's no urgency like urgency in a game. Your defense sees your offense every day, so they get very comfortable playing each other and they play the plays and that's bad habits and vice versa. You don't have game plans, so it's really hard to get better.\
“And I think the biggest thing, with the improvement from the first week to the second week, all the mistakes you make in the first game, you correct and you're more prepared for those the second week. So, this is more like the second week of the season for us because Syracuse has been so long ago. It’s hard to even remember.”
