Mack Brown Monday Press Conference: building on the Clemson performance, grief from his grandson and finding consistency

The Tar Heels will look to ride the wave into Atlanta

Mack Brown met with the media on Monday morning to review the Clemson game and look ahead to this weekend's trip to Georgia Tech.

Only one injury note: freshman safety Cam Kelly is still being evaluated after getting hurt making a tackle vs. the Tigers.

Here's what Brown had to say.

Opening Statement

I first want to congratulate Dabo and Clemson. You’ve got to give them credit. Twenty straight wins is a lot, it’s the most in college football. The guys know how to win. And they hung in there. We gave them a great shot and put a lot of pressure on them. I thought our team played really, really hard. I was proud of them. This might have been a better atmosphere than Miami. I thought the home crowd gave us a great advantage. That’s not something we’ve always talked about here. But they were loud from the start to the finish. Our students are unbelievable, there can’t be any better student group in America than those students. They come early and they’re so loud every play. It’s 90 degrees and the fans and the students continued to work throughout the game, and really threw Clemson off some. They’ve played in front of bigger venues than this for sure. But the five or six false-start penalties, I thought, were a lot of the effect of the crowd. So we really, really appreciate the crowd.

We played Clemson down to one play, which I don’t think anybody thought we would do before the game, because they’re so good and the No. 1 team in the country. I said I love this team, I love their fight. I thought we played our most full game. We played every quarter, we still gave up the touchdown right before the half, which was a killer. But Trevor Lawrence made some tremendous plays in that drive. The play down here near our end zone where it should have been a sack, and he ends up sprinting out to his left and throwing. And we’ve got two guys on the receiver, and he still catches it, which is the one on third down that led to the touchdown. But I think he overcame three third downs of five or more in that drive. So he’s a tremendous player for sure.

The good thing is we can do better. We can play better than we played Saturday. And there’s a lot of things that we could’ve done that we didn’t do. And that’s something that we should continue to build on. I love their hearts. We’re really improving. We’re in great shape. But they haven’t had excuses about young people and they haven’t had excuses about injuries, or scheduling. And we’ve played some really good teams that have been emotional games for us, so I like the fact that they just keep playing and have not had excuses.

We’ve asked them to be aggressive so I’m going to be aggressive because we’ve got to start winning again. We’ve got to finish to do that. On the fourth-and-1, people who questioned why we went for it, our defense was worn out and had a bunch of guys hurt. So you go for the fourth-and-1 to try to stay on the field. Because every snap that Trevor Lawrence is on the boundary or Etienne is a win for us. So we were disappointed that we didn’t make third-and-1 and fourth-and-1. And that gave them a shorter field. I think they started around the 35 or 40 on the other end, and that led to a score. But if we had the same situation again, we’d go for it. That’s what we said going into the game with the kids. We were going to be aggressive and wanted them to be aggressive.

Two-point play, absolutely, 100 percent go for it again. We had three to five guys out on defense. It hurt us when they called the timeout because they had 10 on the field, because that saved them more clock. We were trying to get the clock down under a minute and they only had one timeout left. So we thought our best advantage was take one play to win, and then try to hold them from a field goal, because we had not kicked it off well. They were returning it to the 35 or the 40. Trevor can beat you with his arm or his legs. He’s a lot like a Vince Young, because you can’t stop the guy. That’s why he’s never lost a game as a starting quarterback. So we felt like a one-play shot was better than taking a chance, and then taking a chance on having them kick a field goal because they had already missed one, and then taking a depleted defense into overtime. The play that we ran was zone-read. You’ve got an opportunity to hand it to Javonte Williams. You’ve got an opportunity for your quarterback to keep it or you’ve got an opportunity to pitch it to Dazz Newsome. All three really good players. When a play call doesn’t work, the playcaller gets criticized. Even my 8-year-old grandson said, ‘Why that play, pops?’ I said, ‘OK Tyler, let it go bud.’ But even he said it.

But you can only run about four plays down there and move your quarterback to throw with a rub type play, you can throw a fade to a receiver, you can run some kind of trick play, but there’s not a lot of room for it. So you get down to where there are three or four different things you can do, and that was one of them we had picked and it didn’t work.

We started three true freshmen on defense and even when Cam Kelly got hurt on his really strong tackle on Trevor Lawrence, Don Chapman came in and did a really good job. So coaches are doing a good job of, again, not whining and not questioning who’s in, just putting them in. I thought Jay was really aggressive Saturday with young guys. He didn’t care, he just said, ‘Let’s go.’ And he put guys in really good positions. By far the best our linebackers have played. And we had Dominique Ross on the field a lot with (Chazz) Surratt and (Jeremiah) Gemmel because he’s a really good pass rusher, so that was one change we made for this game. And we put more pressure on the quarterback than we have.

Offensively, I thought the offensive line, who’s been criticized a lot for being soft, did a good job. We outrushed Clemson and nobody would’ve thought that going into the game either. They protected better and it’s the same five. It helped us that Charlie Heck was back even though he had his hand in a cast, and he had a thumb and a finger free. But he’s a tough, tough guy to come out there and play as well as he did.

So after five games that have all come down to the last series of the game, you look back up and what it looks like to me is we’ve played hard all five weeks, we played with more emotion against South Carolina and with Miami and with Clemson than we did Wake or App State. So what we’ve started doing is talking about us. We’re the ones that need to play hard every week. We’re the ones that have to play to a standard and not talking about who we’re playing, because we’ve been up and down with our emotion. And we’re not good enough to do that. We’re not experienced enough to do that. And we’ve got to learn to finish these games, and we’ve got to finish them better than we are. At the same time, all of our goals are still out there. We can still go to a bowl, we can still win the Coastal, we can still have a chance to play probably Clemson in the ACC championship again. And that would be our goal. That hasn’t changed. But we’ve got a lot of work to do before we get to that point. And we’ve got to practice better. We had our best practices last week, and that was starting on Sunday. And yesterday was good. So we’ve got to start doing things on a day-to-day basis better and not be the up and down team.

Geoff Collins is a really good choice in my estimation at Georgia Tech. He’s been there. He knows the place, he brings a lot of energy. They’re coming off a couple of tough games like we are. It’s an interesting note when you go back and look that we’ve won in Atlanta since our last game here. So it’s been a very, very difficult place for us to play. I think we won 28-20 on a Thursday night against George O’Leary’s team before we played Florida State the next weekend, No. 1 Florida State.

The only other time that Carolina has won in Atlanta against Georgia Tech is 2015, and that was 38-31, a tough game with our best team through that decade winning 11 games. So for whatever reason, we have not played well against Georgia Tech in Atlanta. As every other game has come down to the last drive of the game, why would I think anything different? So we’ve got to prepare our guys to make sure we play well.

I'm also proud of our coaches. Our coaches are working really, really hard to work with these guys to put them in the right place to win. As I said, I thought Jay was more aggressive on Saturday and took chances. And then you’ve got Storm Duck who held up at corner for most of the day. And Trey Morrison played well, Cam Kelly and Don Chapman did a good job inside. Those guys all played well, and that’s coaching. And then on offense, they start huddling up some. They tried to keep our offensive line more rested. They tried to make sure Sam had the right call. And I thought the changes and the adjustments that we made for his game for Clemson helped us offensively as well.

Still got to do a better job in the kicking game. You saw what Ben Kiernan can do, he hit a 63-yard punt. But we’ve got to start returning punts better. We got close to a couple of blocks but we didn’t get there. We thought we had to get something in the kicking game to beat Clemson. And our kickoff coverage was not very good, which was another thing that really concerned me as we got toward the end of the game. So we’ve got to get ready to play, is the biggest thing.

On playing to the level of competition and finally winning a game comfortably

I’d like to see our team win, period. Players say that, Wake Forest is undefeated and in the top 25. And they were really good competition and we didn’t play up to that level in that game. Appalachian’s undefeated. So I think that the guys know that they didn’t have as much passion in those two games as they did the other three, and the other three we played better in. So I think that’s probably what they’re saying, that we have to be us and we have to play with passion to have a chance to win.

On going for two and the message it sends to his team, fans and recruits

Absolutely, we’re going to be aggressive. 

I’m at a stage in my life where I don’t care about anything but winning and doing it within the rules. So if anybody wants to criticize me, who cares? I don’t care. I’m not looking for another job. So I think the biggest thing is that it’s freedom to be this age and to have won this many games and be able to do what you think is best for your team. And the interesting thing is, I’m the only one that sat there and knew how our defense looked and how they felt. I’m the only one that watched the offense and the offensive coaches, that felt like they had a play they thought was going to win the game.

Nobody else has that, so anybody else that’s making decisions on what I should have done doesn’t have the information I have. So that’s why it’s kind of comical when people say, ‘I wouldn’t have done that.’ Well, you’ve got no clue. You have no information. So you wouldn’t have done it after we lost. You would’ve done it if we’d have won. I’d have been coach of the year.

So I don’t care about that stuff anymore. But for the kids, I want them to know I came back to help them win. And I’m not going to, it would’ve been less criticism on me if I had kicked the extra point and let it play out, then if we lose, ‘Oh, we just were a little short.’ I wanted to win.

On instilling confidence in his team with that call

I don’t care what the score is. If we’re behind, I’m going to keep taking risks to try to catch up. If it makes the score two more touchdowns down, I don’t care. It’s all about winning. And we need to start winning. If I’m going to be passive, then they’re going to be passive. We’ve had a tough couple of years around here. We’re off to a good start in my estimation because we’re fighting every week, and now we’ve got to finish these things. But the message to them was absolutely, we’re coming to win, we’re not coming to lay up.

When we won the national championship in ’05, our theme was from Harvey Penick: take dead aim. And it meant take dead aim at the national championship and anything less than that wasn’t going to be any good. We couldn’t be second, and that’s kind of the attitude that I’ve got with this team. Let’s go. Let’s go for it. Got to win some games. And recruits, the response from the recruits has been unbelievable. Every recruit said, ‘Man I love it, I’d have gone for 2.’ So that’s important too.

On balancing his belief of not having moral victories vs. what UNC can build on

It’s a great question, and there is a balance there. But I told them: I’m proud that you fought to the end. They didn’t feel good at the end. They were really disappointed in the dressing room. It was a sad dressing room, and that’s a good thing. But they see what we’re capable of and now they’ve got to build on it.

So will we come back and have a great practice Tuesday, because we need to improve as a team. And that’s the biggest question right now. We’ve been this way (hand motion up and down) for five weeks, we’ve got to be this way (hand motion going up). As long as we’re this way, we’ll be fine. And we cannot let the injuries that we’ve had that are more than I’ve ever seen. I think we had 15 starters we lost my last year at Texas, so it’s not more than I’ve ever seen. It’s in the ballpark.

But we cannot let that derail us. We’ve just got to keep playing. And when you lose an older one, you hate it for them but that lets younger ones play. And that helps you for the future. If you lose a younger one, then you’ve got some other young ones that have to play. If we don’t have Cam, then you’ve got to have other safeties. (DeAndre) Hollins has got to step up. Giovanni’s (Biggers) got to step up. That’s the way it was for Chapman and Cam last week. So it’s part of the process.

On focusing on themselves vs. looking too much at opponents

It’s gotta be about us. I think I’ve talked too much about the opponents and in my previous life, I didn’t do that; it was all about is. It’s got to be about us getting better, it’s got to be about us having fun, it’s got to be about us playing aggressively to win, every week regardless of who we play. You could see we were ready to play. The first of the game, we hand it to Michael Carter and he runs right up the middle and we get eight yards. The first play of the game at Wake Forest, they hand it off and they make eight yards running right at us and hit us in the face.

I used to tell Sally, ‘Look and see who runs the ball the best in the first quarter and you can usually tell who’s going to win the game if somebody doesn’t mess it up.’ We were running the ball better and that gave us a chance to win the game. If you’re not ready to play, we’re not good enough not to be ready to play and beat anybody, period. We just can’t do that and there’s a difference, it’s really hard for people outside of the business, I think, to understand they can play hard but not with passion. They’re a little more high, they’re not down in their stance, they’re not getting the first hit, they’re catching a little — they’re playing hard — but they’re just not as ready to go, they’re not as focused. Last week was the best practice this bunch has ever had since I’ve been here; they were perfect, and that’s what we’ve got to be. It’ll be a big challenge this week to see if they’ll come off the high and go back and stand around, and if you do, then you’re in trouble, or, if you go back to work.

I said yesterday day before practice, ‘There is a standard that we expect for you to practice to.’ It’s on me, our coaches and our players to work to that standard this week and we’re going to be all over them. We’re going to be like they played bad Saturday because this is what we’ve got to be. We’ve got to become the team that’s angry every week and wants to do the best we can do; not go like this, go like the wind and right now we’re a little bit like the wind.

On building from the Clemson game

I think the thing that you look at is, if we lay down and don’t play after this, then we didn’t learn. If we use it again to continue to grow and build, then we really learned something. It did send a message to our fanbase that we’re headed in the right direction. It did send a message to recruits that, if we can get Clemson down to one play, we’re going to be good in the future, so you’d better jump on now because this train is taking off. So, if you want to be part of this, come on. If you get beat 45-10, that’s a hard message. I think everything came out of Saturday good, except we lost by one point.

What went into the decision to have Charlie Heck play?

There were two things. Number one, could he handle the pain? Last week, he could not have. They say that pain is not as bad in 10 days as it is the first week. He played with a broken hand at Wake Forest; I think he got it hurt really early in the game and he wasn’t coming out.

The second thing is, we asked the doctors, number one, ‘Can he damage it any more by playing?’ They said absolutely not, so it was totally up to Charlie whether he felt that number one, he could play with that pain and could he be effective with two fingers free and a cast? He did really well; he’s a tough sucker. I told him after the game, ‘Good for you. Most guys, top pro prospects would not play.’ They just lay out the rest of the year and that was never a decision for him. In fact, it helped so much that he was in the huddle and out there with the younger ones because he’s really the leader after we lost Nick. Those are our two leaders and we didn’t have either one of them for Appalachian State and it really hurt us. He was a key factor just being out there, much less playing.

Is Charlie playing hurt something you’ll point out to NFL guys?

Absolutely. Again, he could have laid down. It would have been safer and easier for him not to play and he’s playing against the best talent in the country and it’s good for them to see he’s playing against the best talent in the country when he didn’t have to, with one hand. I really think he helped his stock on Saturday.

Was the inside three-linebacker lineup specific to the Clemson game?

The thing we’re trying to do is get the best player on the field and right now, Gemmel and Surratt are playing so well and Dominique Ross has started playing really well, and Dominique is a better pass rusher than some of our other guys and we’ve got to get more pressure on the passer. We felt like with his speed in space — he made a great play in space on a screen once where he just wrapped him up and tackled him, which is a hard thing to do.

Gemmel was way to the left and sprinted all the way to the right on an out route on a third down and knocked it out of bounds and Surratt was all over the field. Those three guys, right now, are playing at such a high level — we don’t have a lot of depth — so we’ve got to get the best 11 out there every play we can.

On playing several freshmen in major roles on defense

Tomari Fox has been playing a lot. He had some trouble with the zone read; we finally said at some point, ‘Take one of them. Take the back or the quarterback, let’s be decisive here. Let’s don’t let them both make yards.’ He's going to be a really good player; he plays hard every play. He’s playing so much we had to take him off special teams because he was on kickoff returns as the middle wedge guy.

We think Storm Duck will be really good in time, he just hasn’t played any. He had a mistake down here on the deep touchdown pass, but he played really, really well. Cam and Chapman were alternating with Wolfolk out and Myles Dorn was a hero in the game; he played both. He just changed safeties. When Chapman would come in, he’d go to the other safety and when Cam would come in, he’d go back and he was kind of directing them throughout. We feel like we’re going to play the best athletes who give us the best effort in practice and we don’t care about age.

On improvement on penalties

The biggest thing is discipline. From day one, we said, ‘Clean up your locker room, clean up your table in the cafeteria after you get through, make sure that you’re on time to every meeting, make sure you’re in class every day they have class.’ Then, we have ACC officials at every practice. They throw a flag and we mark it off any time there’s a penalty and they call out the name and we keep a sheet, a running sheet, of how many penalties they’ve had since we’ve been here and we talk to them about it.

To be able to help alleviate penalties, you’ve got to really pay attention to it.

Are there consequences for getting penalties?

We’re telling them, ‘You’d better be playing really, really good if you’re giving us a penalty,’ because if you’re going to cost us and you’re not playing well, you’re not going to play. Everything we’ve talked about is earning the right to play.

What we talked about with them Saturday was earning the respect. You’re on ABC, you’re on national TV, millions of people are going to watch you, people think you’re soft, people don’t think you can win. So, the big eye in the sky don’t lie; either you are soft or you’re not. Either you earn the respect of people or you don’t, that’s up to you, but here’s a great opportunity because it’s the biggest challenge we’ve got all year. It’s a great opportunity for you to step up and show people, ‘This is different,’ and they did that.

On the Georgia Tech offense

Geoff has done a really good job. I thought he would go pro-style and just change it all, and he’s not. He kept enough of the option principles in there that he’s doing both and I think that’s really smart on his part. Like us, they’re going to get better every week.

He ran into a buzzsaw last week. After their win, they’re kind of like us, after they beat South Florida, they didn’t play well against Citadel because that’s one of those where you kind of yawn, then you stand around and the game’s close at the end and, ‘Oh my gosh,’ and they kick a field goal to beat you because they weren’t as emotionally prepared.

Last week was a complete ambush, because I’ve done that, with Geoff going back to Temple after he recruited all those players; they were going to be after him. When I came back in here, it wasn’t a lot of fun; there were a lot of people who liked to beat us. I knew that was going to be a tough one for him. They’ll be ready to play.

Why have we not played well in Atlanta for 22 years? 10 of those 22 haven’t been good. That’s a weird thing in sports, but you never, never know why some people have trouble at some places and others don’t. We had trouble at Kansas State when I was at Texas. I don’t know why. I used to ask them to move the game to Kansas City, they wouldn’t do it.

On the defensive gameplan

When you’re playing a Clemson, what they do, is they’re so good outside with those big, tall, fast receivers. You’ve got Etienne and there’s three seniors, a graduate and a sophomore on that offensive line, it’s an older, experienced offensive line that’s really tough. That’s what they do. It’s pick your poison.

If you spread out and try to zone and cover the receivers, they’re going to run Etienne and Lawrence until the game is over, so you can have a slow death. Or, you can pack them in and try to slow down those two and they’re going to throw to the tall guys one-on-one and you get killed by the pass because they can have 13 negative plays then throw a deep ball to a tall guy and score, be up 21-0 and you’re playing good. Our decision was to try to disguise enough to make it look like we were going to have a zone coverage and then come after them.

We were a little bit late on a couple of safety blitzes that we had, but by and large, I thought there was some confusion for Clemson and our guys did a really good job of showing one thing and playing another. Especially as young as we were in that secondary, two true freshmen back there. I thought we did an amazing job.

On the play that was stopped but Sam Howell took a hit

I got none. He said he didn’t see it. I said, ‘Well, it’s up there.’

On name and likeness

I really don’t understand enough about it. Like all coaches, I want every advantage for the student-athlete that we can give them. Cost of attendance was huge; they’re getting money now that they’ve never gotten before. I got $15 a month when I was in school and that was called laundry money, and nobody washed their clothes anyway. That was cash; that was heavy cash.

Now you’ve got cost of attendance, which is really good. It’s a lot of money every month for the guys. I get confused on what this means and before it would go into place, I’d love to have somebody explain to me, does the third-team right guard get as much money as the star quarterback? I don’t know. I get confused on how that’s going to work and how that’s going to happen.

I think it’s really, really important for the NCAA and college football to determine exactly what that means before we do it because we’ve got a little bit of Wild, Wild West out there right now. We’re just doing some things that aren’t always, to me, thought out. If you think about the four-game redshirt rule, coaches wanted that in — this sounds like a different subject, but it’s really not — coaches wanted that in so at the end of the year, they could play freshmen in four games and still redshirt them if they got everybody hurt and didn’t have enough people to cover kicks, or if you blew somebody out, you could put them in and let them have some experience. We thought that was a great rule. It wasn’t for young guys to sit around and wait until their fourth game was over and decide whether they wanted to stay with that team or not or transfer or not.

The graduate transfer rule, that was put in only for young people that couldn’t find their curriculum for their graduate school or couldn’t get into the graduate school at their own school and they could go somewhere else. Now, people are graduating in three years so they can just transfer if they’re not happy.

I think neither one of those ended up with exactly what we wanted, so with this likeness rule, I think we’ve really got to be smart and see, ‘Is it going to be fair across the board to all kids?’ Vince Young would have made a lot more money than our backup right corner. Is that fair? Does it hurt your team that one player is making so much money of his likeness that it’s disruptive with the other guys that don’t get to play as much? Then, it affects recruiting because that changes, too. Who’s getting the biggest dollar for their likeness? I think there’s a lot of things that I need more clear before I could make a decision, even though we want what’s best for every student-athlete and at the same time, you want what’s best for your teams. We’ve got to be careful that it doesn’t get so individualized it starts being about them instead of the team.