UNC's Military Bowl Victory a Celebration of the Past, Preview of the Future

Tar Heel seniors helped rebuild a foundation for a bright future.

ANNAPOLIS, Md. — A little over a year ago, members of the North Carolina football roster only knew Mack Brown as an ESPN analyst and national champion at Texas.

Brown, the retired coach, only knew the Tar Heels from what he’d seen of them when he stopped by for practice and caught them on television. He’d also heard of a kid down in Charlotte, Sam Howell, who was heading to Florida State.

One year later, there they were, all together on the field at Navy-Marine Corps Memorial Stadium, celebrating Carolina’s 55-13 destruction of Temple in the Military Bowl, capping a dramatic turnaround for a program that had won just five games in the two seasons before his return to Chapel Hill.

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“To be where we are now compared to where we were a year ago when I walked into that meeting and looked into those faces that were sad and disappointed because they just lost their coach and had a tough year,” Brown said, reflecting on the contrast.

Carolina’s third straight victory arrived like others, with a nod to the veterans who stuck with the program through tough times — big defensive plays from Myles Dorn, Tomon Fox and Dominique Ross — and a preview of the future in 534 yards of total offense, led by Sam Howell completing 25 of 34 attempts for 294 yards with three touchdowns.

Friday’s victory perfectly encapsulated the Tar Heels’ approach this season, as Brown and his staff refused to toss aside veterans in the name of building for the future.

In turn, seniors walked off the field for the final time in their Carolina career as winners — something they didn’t experience nearly as much as they expected after their freshman seasons.

“It was definitely special,” he said. “Our careers here have been a roller coaster; hot start and below — very below average middle — but we’re on the rise when we finished. For us to be able to do that, it was definitely special.”

Brown went all the way back to his first tenure when he added some perspective to what this season meant for guys like Crawford, Dorn and their classmates.

“For the rest of Myles’ life, and those seniors lives … like Corey Holliday and Tommy Thigpen and Rick Steinbacher and Dwight Hollier, they started North Carolina football back in the right direction,” Brown said. “Myles and these seniors have got this thing headed back in the right direction.”

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Seated to Brown’s left in the postgame press conference, Dorn looked back on the journey with pride.

“I think it’s big in the sense of creating an identity for what this football team and this program is about,” Dorn said. “Coming in when you have a coaching change, you don’t know exactly what to expect and you don’t know what the future holds for the team, but as the year goes on, we created an identity for ourselves, we set a standard we can build on for years to come.”

To Brown’s right sat the game’s Most Valuable Player, and not surprisingly, Howell didn’t bring his trophy to the table.

Instead, he deflected praise to his teammates for helping him finish off one of the finest seasons not only in Carolina history, but for any freshman quarterback in college football.

“My O-line did really good all year long keeping me protected, and how about those receivers? I have some really good receivers around me, so they make my job easy,” he said.

He’s not wrong, as Dyami Brown and Dazz Newsome both took turns making highlight-plays as they became the fourth and fifth Carolina players to post 1,000-yard receiving seasons. Behind them, Michael Carter crossed the threshold for 1,000 yards in the fourth quarter, while Javonte Williams came up fewer than 100 yards short of the milestone.

Just over a year ago, there was plenty to be excited about within the football program, but that was just hope.

Now, there’s tangible proof of the new standard — one that, oddly enough, seemed to really take hold on a miserable November night in Chapel Hill when the Tar Heels blew out Mercer 56-7.

In the days leading up to that game, Brown saw the program the veterans wanted to leave for the youngsters, and the program the youngsters want to build.

“The week that we practiced before Mercer was one of the best weeks of practice we’ve had and it shouldn’t have been — they weren’t as good as we were,” Brown said. “It would have been a week, that unless a team wanted to get better, they would have taken it off.”

Instead, Carolina has taken off in its past three games, beating Mercer, N.C. State and Temple by an average score of 50.6 to 10.

“I think it impacted so much because we try to treat every opponent the same, and to be able to do that with Mercer, we feel like we can do that every single week,” Carter said.

So, in a fitting tribute, the Tar Heels recognized both the past and the future in their postgame celebrations as only the seniors joined Brown to accept the trophy. Then, back in the locker room, the Tar Heels presented the game ball to Mack’s wife, Sally.

The logic? Without Sally, Mack isn’t back, and if Mack isn’t back, maybe Carolina football isn’t, either.

“Who else is going to do that? There’s no money that could have brought Mack back,” Carter said. “He’s rich — very rich.”

And without a class that had endured everything at Carolina, it wouldn’t have been easy to get the future of Carolina football back to where it was in 2015 and 2016 — back when these veterans arrived.

“This was a great finish to a season that we needed to have a winning season because these seniors wanted to put us in a position with momentum moving forward that would really help us,” Brown said. “Now, these guys coming back have something to build on,” Brown said. “Seven (wins) is not enough anymore. You want to go to a bowl every year and get a streak of wins.”