Tar Heels Adjusting, Essentially Starting Anew

CHAPEL HILL – Mack Brown admittedly has a jokester side to his personality.

He calls it being a “smart aleck” and his players have all witnessed this side of the North Carolina coach more than a few times.

So, when Brown told his team following last Thursday’s practice that Charlotte, the Tar Heels’ slated opponent two days later, had cancelled the game, they didn’t exactly believe him. They had just finished game-week preparation and turned in a terrific practice. They were ready to play, so the players weren’t exactly welcoming of Brown’s attempt at humor.

Only that it wasn’t a joke at all, he was being serious. And the Tar Heels ended up spending Saturday watching games on TV insetad of playing as the psychological rollercoaster of the 2020 football season once again reared its uncertain head. And with that, the Heels went back to the drawing board.

Adding to the frustration was UNC’s inability to nail down an opponent for this coming weekend, which is a scheduled open date.

“I told them, ‘It is what it is,’” Brown said via zoom following Tuesday morning’s practice. “‘It could happen again this year, this is the year of uncertainty, so don’t get in I’m up, I’m down, I hate this – it doesn’t matter. It is what it is.’”

The reality facing UNC is it will go three weeks between regular season games for the first time since 1952, when a polio outbreak forced the cancellation of games versus NC State and Georgia. It also means the Tar Heels will go into October having played just one game for the first time since 1961, when teams regularly started their seasons in the third and sometimes fourth Saturdays of September.

The Tar Heels defeated Syracuse, 31-6, on Sept. 12, but circumstances have forced them to put that game so far in the rearview mirror the mandate moving forward is to treat their next game, Oct. 3 at Boston College, as a season opener.

“What we told our players and coaches, ‘Let’s just start the season over. Syracuse was a game, it’s done, so we’re two weeks out from the opener. So let’s just go back and restart,’” Brown said. “And that’s what we’re trying to get their mentality to be.”

Upon learning the cancellation of the Charlotte game, UNC’s brass figured it wouldn’t be difficult to land an opponent for the 26th, so the staff immediately flipped the rest of the weekend into a traditional open date. That included weightlifting Friday, off Saturday and a Sunday practice. The approach was as if they’d play a game this coming Saturday. But since that isn’t happening, the Tar Heels will be in full open-date mode.

“We’ll have a little scrimmage with the young ones on Thursday, we’ll be in pads all three days this week,” Brown said. “What we will do is they’ll lift on Friday morning, go to their classes, have Saturday off and then we’ll come back (Sunday) and start game-week preparation for Boston College.”

Included is using this opportunity to develop more depth without the aid of a game. The younger players will get added reps while the older ones do enough to stay sharp.

As for what the Heels lost from not playing Charlotte extends beyond the chance to notch another victory and rack up some stats, but includes game reps, regardless of the opponent, that cannot be simulated in practice. The Tar Heels need to clean up some of what didn’t go well against Syracuse while also getting some younger guys ready.

“We’re working a lot with fundamentals and some team periods with the older guys and then we’re doing a lot of scrimmaging and work with the young ones,” Brown said. “With the inside (run) drill today, the young ones took a lot. So, we’re trying to balance the older ones, the experienced ones, make sure they know what to do against Boston College and make sure they’re in great shape – they’re still running a lot.

“We’re still working the young ones a lot that would have gotten some playing time against Charlotte that we lost.”

And those lost reps are huge. Consider, true freshman Ja’Qurious Conley played 23 defensive snaps versus Syracuse and 22 plays on special teams. He was on the field for 45 plays. Now that he would have started the Charlotte game with Trey Morrison moving to safety in place of Myles Wolfolk, he could have benefitted tremendously getting 50 or so snaps versus the 49ers.

That’s just one example, and it’s a big one.

“It’s not good,” Brown said. “We’re disappointed because that’s why that game was scheduled. We felt like it would be a competitive game, but we would get some work on our depth and we’ve missed that.”

Such is Carolina’s reality, and so is the mission: Stay healthy, no positive tests and get to Chestnut Hill to play game number two of the season.