What Mack Brown said after UNC’s regular season-ending blunder at NC State
Virtually nothing went right for the UNC football team on Saturday night at NC State, with the host Wolfpack winning a 39-20 contest.
The score wasn’t indicative of how bad the game was, particularly in the first half. While the Tar Heels struggled to get merely a first down, the Wolfpack seemed to pick up first downs with every carry, catch and throw.
Exactly how bad was the game for UNC? All you need to know is in this X by Bryan Fischer, a National College Football Writer at Fox Sports:
North Carolina State has eight scoring drives against UNC and hasn't punted. Quite the destruction in the Triangle and still a ton of time left.
— Bryan Fischer (@BryanDFischer) November 26, 2023
Let’s not take any credit away from NC State, who scored 39 points and racked up 504 yards of offense. The Wolfpack defense held Drake Maye without a completion in the first quarter. Yes – the same Maye who was, at one point, in contention for the Heisman Trophy.
UNC scored three touchdowns in the game, but two of them came in garbage time. Omarion Hampton didn’t come close to 100 yards rushing. The offense, which normally plays respectably despite the defensive meltdown, was hard to watch at times.
Was this Mack Brown’s last game as the Carolina head coach?
If you look at social media, a lot of Tar Heel faithful want him gone. UNC has lost three straight to its greatest football rival, plus shown an inability in responding to adversity against any opponent.
Regardless of whether Brown is on the Tar Heel sidelines for the TBD Bowl Game, let’s take a look at what he had to say after Saturday’s loss:
Mack Brown on how disappointing the loss was
“I’ve had a lot of disappointments,” Mack Brown told InsideCarolina. “It would be hard to sit here and rate them, but it’s in the group (among the most disappointing results.”
Mack Brown on if there was something off in practice this week
“No,” Brown told InsideCarolina. “We had a whole lot of people hurt, so we didn’t we didn’t put pads on, and that obviously wasn’t a good decision. I mean, we couldn’t practice because we had so many people banged up, we didn’t know how many we were gonna have ready to play tonight. But that’s not an excuse. Everybody’s — it’s late in the year, so it’s part of the deal.”
Mack Brown on another late-season collapse
“I don’t think there is a common thread,” Brown told InsideCarolina. “I keep looking for ways to win more than eight games and we’ve got a chance to win nine again — which is pretty good around here — in the bowl game. But had a great game against Duke two weeks ago, three weeks ago, whatever it was. So we played a good team tonight. They are hard to beat over here and they played better than we did.”
On UNC's poor first-half effort
“No, I thought that they tried,” Brown told InsideCarolina. “I did a poor job preparing this team to play or we wouldn’t have looked that bad. And that’s me and a group of assistant coaches — has nothing to do with the kids because they played their guts out the second half. So that’s just it.”
On UNC's greatest defensive issue
“I don’t know … We didn’t tackle well,” Brown told InsideCarolina. “I thought it was really throwing the ball more than it was the other — Brennan Armstrong did a tremendous job. We didn’t put pressure on him and he hit everybody. They were all open and he made some great throws. So gotta give him a lot of credit. I thought he played really well since he’s come back in. I bragged on him Monday because it’s hard for a kid to get benched and come back and do what he’s done. Like I said, that kid’s really a tough kid and a confident kid and he did a tremendous job tonight.”
