As North Carolina prepares to face North Carolina Central, an FCS opponent, head coach Mack Brown is urging his team not to take any game lightly.
Despite the perceived advantage, Brown emphasized the importance of consistent effort and cautioned against underestimating any opponent.
In a press conference earlier this week, Brown referenced Notre Dame’s shocking loss to Northern Illinois, sending a pointed message to his players about the risks of complacency.
“If you talked to Coach Freeman today, would you ask if Northern Illinois was a good team to be on the schedule?” Brown asked.
Brown expanded on his point, stressing that while mistakes and bad plays are inevitable in football, what he won’t tolerate is a lack of effort.
“I don’t have anything to do with the schedule, it was done before I got here, our job is to coach to the standard and play the best we can play every week,” Brown added. “The one thing that I said, at the first of the press conference, is we’re seeing teams do this. And you can’t do that.
“Great teams, the Tom Osborne Nebraska teams always amazed me because it didn’t matter who they played, they played great. And they were excited. And that’s what I wanted at Texas. And we got so we were doing that. We haven’t done that here.
“We’ve played up and down here. And I hate it. I hate seeing kids get hurt, I hate seeing kids get in trouble, and I hate teams that don’t play as hard as they can play, every week. Those three things just are unacceptable. The other two, it changes their lives. This one changes football at North Carolina and our lives.”
The Tar Heels’ coach made it clear that his goal is to establish a culture where the team gives maximum effort every time they step onto the field, no matter the opponent.
He pointed out that the same intensity players bring to practice should carry over to game day.
“We’re trying so hard to change that culture where we play the hardest. You’re not ever going to play the best you can play every week, you’re going to make some good plays and bad plays. That’s kids with football. But, you can play hard every week,” Brown said.
“I told the guys: You practiced every day of spring practice hard and you’re practicing three days a week. You practiced every day of preseason hard and you’re hitting every day. Why in the world do you come out here in practice in pads Tuesday and Wednesday and can’t be ready for Saturday? It makes absolutely no sense.”
Brown also commented on the influence of social media, holding up his phone as a symbol of the distractions his players face.
The coach explained that preparation isn’t just about what happens on the field. He emphasized the importance of how players manage their time off the field as well, warning that poor decisions in the hours leading up to practice could lead to poor performance on game day.
“Part of it is, we’ve got a problem with this, we’ve got social media now,” Brown said, holding up his iPhone. “So we sit there and saw how good we are and how great things are and we can’t possibly lose and then you start feeling good about yourself and then you can’t prepare.
“So we have talked to the guys every day about how you win and how you lose and you need to be positive, you need to be focused. You need to be ready to practice and you need to do the best you can every day.
“We told them yesterday when we left practice, that you’ve got 36 hours to prepare for Tuesday’s practice. And if you tell me what you did in those 36 hours, I can tell you whether you’re going to play good or not … If you stayed up till 2 o’clock on your phone last night, playing video games, you’re probably not going to practice good.
“If you don’t practice good Tuesday, you’re probably not going to play good. So, it is really, really hard to be great. And to do that, you’ve got to every little thing right. And usually when we say, ‘You lost because you made too many mistakes,’ no, you lost because you weren’t ready to play and that’s why you made too many mistakes. When you’re ready to play, you usually play good.”
We all know the point that Brown is trying to make and he’s 1,000,000% correct. This type of attitude and approach is what separates the elite teams from everyone else.
Having said that, it’s easier said than done, especially in today’s world because of the distractions he mentioned.
Unfortunately for Marcus Freeman and Notre Dame, their shocking collapse against Northern Illinois has served as a wake-up call for the rest of the country.
(Texas head coach Steve Sarkisian also used the nightmare upset as a major hammering point for his Longhorns this week.)
Of course, Freeman and the Irish have no one to blame for the disaster but themselves.
Adding salt to the wound is the fact that a very similar situation played out last season against Marshall. With history repeating itself, Freeman goes from the toast of Sound Bend to a (semi) hot seat in the matter of a week.
Do you think last Saturday’s shocker will be the biggest upset we see all season long???