News & Notes from Mack Brown’s Press Conference to Begin Georgia Tech Week – 247Sports
CHAPEL HILL, N.C. — North Carolina football coach Mack Brown met with reporters Monday for his first media availability of the week that leads to Saturday’s game against visiting Georgia Tech.
The Tar Heels (9-1 overall, 6-0 ACC) are coming off their 36-34 road win at Wake Forest that clinched the ACC’s Coastal Division title. Drake Maye accounted for 519 total yards and four total touchdowns, and Josh Downs hauled in 11 catches for 154 yards and three touchdowns, while playing through body cramps in the second half.
The victory marked the fourth straight game during which UNC has overcome a second-half deficit. Two games remain in the regular season, and then the Tar Heels have a Dec. 3 date in the ACC championship game against Clemson, the Atlantic Division champ.
UNC moved up two spots to No. 13 in the AP Top 25 poll on Sunday, and awaits Tuesday night’s release of the third edition of the College Football Rankings. The Tar Heels were No. 15 last week in the second installment from the CFP committee.
Georgia Tech (4-6, 3-4) is coming off a 35-14 loss to Miami. The Yellow Jackets are under interim coach Brent Kay since Geoff Collins’ firing in September. Georgia Tech used freshman Zach Pyron and Akron transfer Zach Gibson at quarterback against Miami, with starter Jeff Sims still sidelined by a foot injury.
Here are our running notes from what Brown said Monday at Kenan Football Center …
— Comments on the shooting in Charlottesville, Va. “We’ve got to be smarter and we’ve got to figure this thing out. We can’t keep having useless deaths. That’s not the news you want to wake up to.”
Brown’s daughter, Barbara Brown Wilson, is an associate professor and faculty director in the School of Architecture at Virginia.
— UNC receiver Antoine Green (upper-body injury) will be evaluated throughout the week and his status for Georgia Tech will be determined closer to game time. He had four catches for 81 yards at Wake Forest, before leaving late in the first half after a big hit over the middle. Wake Forest defensive back AJ Williams drew a targeting penalty on the play.
No update from UNC on safety Ja’Qurious Conley (knee), who suffered an injury setback last week in practice.
— Brown said UNC is “still a crazy team” with equal parts affection and mystification. “For some reason, we can’t play a full game. We just can’t put our foot on the gas and put somebody away. … And then it’s like we go to sleep for a while. I don’t know. It’s something that can get you beat.”
— Players of the game from the Wake Forest win: Maye and Downs (offense), defensive end Kaimon Rucker (defense), tight end John Copenhaver (special teams). Brown said Maye and Downs are as good as any quarterback-receiver combo in college football. Tight end Bryson Nesbit, running back Elijah Green, offensive linemen Corey Gaynor and Asim Richards, Copenhaver and Antoine Green recognized as high-level contributors on offense.
“He’s one of our best defensive players,” Brown said of Rucker. “He’s a tenacious pass rusher. He even played hurt (at Virginia).” Defensive linemen Kevin Hester Jr. and Myles Murphy, and linebackers Cedric Gray and Power Echols, recognized as high-level contributors on defense.
Defensive back Will Hardy, running back D.J. Jones, walk-on linebacker Jake Harkleroad and running back George Pettaway recognized as high-level contributes on special teams.
— Brown points out that UNC is 9-1 for the fourth time since 1980. “These guys are accomplishing things that haven’t been accomplished around here in a long time,” he said.
Brown said in becoming Coastal Division champions, his players “didn’t back into it, and they did it with a couple games left.” But he reiterated the Tar Heels are making “entirely too many mistakes that will get us beat at some point” if they’re not corrected.
— Downs has hauled in an ACC record for catches over a three-game span with 37 receptions. Brown said Gray is “all over the field and playing at a high level” at linebacker. Gray’s 108 tackles on the season and 10.8 tackles per game lead the ACC. “This has been a team that just keeps playing,” Brown said.
UNC’s offense had 16 explosive plays at Wake Forest. The Tar Heels converted 10-of-16 third downs into first downs, but went 0-for-2 on fourth downs.
“As well as we played on offense, I walked away disappointed in red-zone scoring,” Brown said. In the second half, UNC was stuffed on three tries from the Wake Forest 1-yard line and ended that drive without scoring. Later, the Tar Heels reached the Wake Forest 5, before settling for Noah Burnette’s go-ahead field goal that proved to be the game winner. “We’ve got score touchdowns,” Brown said. “That’s just not acceptable and that’s just not who we are.” He added there’s “a certain toughness that you’ve got to have in the red-zone run game.”
— On pulling out another narrow victory in another anxious ending, this time at Wake. “We won the fourth quarter 3-0 and end up winning the game by two.”
— Brown said Georgia Tech dominated UNC when the teams met last year, a 45-22 defeat in September that knocked the Tar Heels out of the AP poll to stay. “They killed us. It was awful,” Brown said. “I looked at it this morning and it made me throw up.”
On the firing of Collins from earlier in the season, Brown said he “hated to see Geoff let go that early in a process, because he took over an option team.” Brown said he has heard good things about Kay, the interim, from people he respects in the coaching business.
Brown said Georgia Tech has beaten Duke and Pittsburgh, teams the Tar Heels rallied to defeat. “And they’re going to play hard,” Brown said. “They’re still in contention for a bowl bid, so they’re going to come in here and give us the best shot they’ve got.”
Brown said UNC needs to be ready to play mentally, and Saturday should make for “a very good test to see where we’ve matured.”
— “Probably the best thing about this team is they’re not near satisfied with how they’re playing,” Brown said. “They’ve been a team that’s been very receptive to criticism.” It’s a group of players who aren’t overly concerned with patting themselves on the back, he said.
Brown said he sees team leaders such as Gray, Echols and safety Gio Biggers pulling the UNC defense together and challenging teammates in a constructive way. Brown said Gray might be most important among the players who have helped engineer a culture change for UNC’s defense. Brown said Gray and Echols bring it every day in practice. “They’re passionate about football,” he said. “I can sit right here and tell you they’ll practice really well in the morning and play really hard on Saturday.”
— Brown said beating Wake Forest on the road produced the latest significant step in this season’s journey for UNC. Now the next steps in the path are Georgia Tech, followed by the regular-season finale against rival NC State.
“You can either become a great team or you can stand around the next couple of weeks and stay a good team,” Brown said, referring to his message with the ACC championship game secured. “It’s totally up to you and your mindset.”
— Brown said Maye “played lights out” at Wake Forest. He said it’s up to the Tar Heels to keep winning to help further Maye’s Heisman Trophy credentials and his candidacy for the award. “I think he should be invited to New York off what he’s done so far,” Brown said of the Heisman ceremony in December.
Brown recalled sitting there three times not knowing whether one of his players was going to win the Heisman, referring to former Texas stars Ricky Williams (the winner in 1998), Vince Young (the runner-up in 2005) and Colt McCoy (the third-place finisher in 2009).
Brown said if he had to pick Heisman-type moments from Maye thus far, he’d choose the touchdown drives at Duke to end the first half (TD pass on the run to Caleb Hood in the corner of the end zone with 13 seconds remaining) and win the game (TD pass on the run to Antoine Green in the corner of the end zone with 16 seconds left).
— Brown said he texted former UNC offensive lineman Jeff Saturday on Sunday night and congratulated him for winning his head coaching debut with the NFL’s Indianapolis Colts. Brown joked he told Saturday to just go ahead and retire now at 1-0 without a loss on his record.
Brown said he enjoyed watching video of Saturday’s postgame speech to the Colts, after they beat the Las Vegas Raiders. “He gets it,” Brown said of Saturday’s personality in a locker room setting. “He’ll do this thing.”
— Brown said both UNC and NC State asked the ACC not to schedule their football game this season for a nighttime kickoff on the day after Thanksgiving, so as not to overlap with or diminish the high school football state playoff games with that will be played that night.
The Tar Heels meet the visiting Wolfpack at 3:30 p.m. on Nov. 25, a matchup at Kenan Stadium to be televised by ABC. Brown said NC State coach Dave Doeren “was passionate about it as well.”
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