No More Nice Heels: players now holding one another accountable

Veterans speaking up, changing culture of accountability

Rich Barnes-USA TODAY Sports

CHAPEL HILL — When Mack Brown returned to North Carolina last winter, he quickly observed that he had a problem in the Tar Heels’ locker room.

It wasn’t a team fractured by a coaching change, nor were there cliques destroying team camraderie. Instead, his team’s chemistry might have been too good.

His guys were a little too friendly.

“They all got along, they’re all buddies, but nobody would ever call anybody out and if somebody wasn’t doing their job,” Brown said. “It was, ‘It’s OK man, it’ll work.’”

It’s been a process breaking the Tar Heels from that habit, and after new strength coach Brian Hess began noticing a change during offseason training sessions, it was the absence of coaches that finally brought about the change Brown wanted to see.

“As soon as summer started,” linebacker Tomon Fox said. “Coaches aren’t here, so we’ve got to hold each other accountable in order to be great. We’re seeing guys calling meetings; after (player-led practices) we’d stay out here even longer just to get extra work in.”

Whether it’s at the practice facility or in the training room getting extra treatment, no Tar Heel rides along these days — something cornerback Patrice Rene says is different from the past.

“It was just, a lot of things really,” he said. “A lot of guys were just doing their own thing, didn’t’ really co-exist really that well. Now, a lot of things are different.”

The past is part of that change, too, as the finality of this season has set in for seniors.

Left guard Nick Polino says he’s spent some time reflecting on his Carolina career this week, thinking back to those first practices in 2016. Sifting through those memories hasn’t been all he’s hoped for, though, and part of the reason he feels like the several players have helped build a new culture of accountability.

Polino and Charlie Heck have taken that responsibility on the offensive line, while the defense is stacked with leaders from Rene and Myles Dorn to Fox and Aaron Crawford.

“The leaders, the guys that have been here a while just kind of made collective decision like, ‘We’re not going to try to go out like we did the past two seasons,’” he said.

Reversing the course of the program comes down to the making the most of every lift, every rep and every sprint in the preseason.

Sometimes, that requires a veteran speaking up and getting onto someone for falling short of the standard.

“You don’t really have to rip somebody up,” Polino said. “You just say something to them … you get on them, but you don’t have to be mean to them.”

A few words can go a long way in helping a teammate reach that standard, and that’s in line with the philosophy Brown has instilled into the Tar Heels since his arrival.

“We all kind of were buckling down and just kind of eliminating all the little things that come to bite you in the butt, like guys pulling up before they get through line,” Polino said. “That’s been a big thing that Coach Brown has been about since he got here, just fixing the small things and the big things will kind of take care of themselves.”