CHAPEL HILL — The message to UNC is clear: Do better.
As the Tar Heels prepare to open the 2023 season, Mack Brown’s fifth in his second stint as Tar Heels coach, the near misses and if onlys of past years will not be good enough this time around.
“The message since spring has been: ‘How do you get from good to great?’” Brown said at the start of game week for UNC’s opener in Charlotte against South Carolina. “When you’ve got a 40-21 lead on App State in the fourth quarter, how do you finish the game?”
Last year’s team nearly gave back the entire lead before escaping with a 63-61 win.
“That hurt us last year,” Brown said. “It tarnished our defense.”
That was far from the only black mark the Tar Heels head coach found, however.
“You’re sitting there, and you’ve got a 17-point lead on Georgia Tech, and you get beat,” he said. “You can’t do that and get where you want to go. You lose to your rival, NC State, on a last-second field goal. You have a 10-point lead on Oregon and you can’t hold it.”
The Tar Heels will get a chance to wipe away that tarnish by opening with a high-profile skirmish with an SEC rival. “We’ve got a great challenge in South Carolina,” Brown said. “They had a lot of momentum at the end of the season.”
The Gamecocks are led by Shane Beamer, a name familiar to ACC fans after his father, Frank, dominated the Coastal Division for years at Virginia Tech. South Carolina also has a potential star at quarterback in Spencer Rattler, a former Heisman dark horse at Oklahoma. The duo blew out Tennessee and upset Clemson to close out the regular season last year, then very nearly knocked off Notre Dame in a bowl game.
It’s the type of challenge Brown came back to Chapel Hill to face, and the kind his team has fallen just short in time and again.
This team, however, has the chance to be as good as the Tar Heels’ squad that went to the Orange Bowl three seasons ago.
“In preseason practice, people ask how the team looks. You can’t tell,” Brown said. “One part looks good, the other bad. If we run the ball well, I’m mad at the defense. If we can’t run it, I’m mad at the offense.”
It appears he won’t be mad at the defense quite as much as last year once the games start. The Heels should be improved on that side of the ball as coordinator Gene Chizik rebuilt the secondary with a busy transfer portal in both directions. Gone are Storm Duck and Tony Grimes, who had their share of big plays but also struggled at times as the Tar Heels finished last in the ACC in total defense and scoring defense.
In their place are newcomers Alijah Huzzie from ETSU, Armani Chatman from Virginia Tech and Stick Lane from Georgia State. They’ve also added DJ Jones, who changed position from running back to safety, which Brown called “one of the most unselfish moves” he’s seen in his career.
The front seven should be strong as well, with linebackers Cedric Gray and Power Echols complementing a deep, experienced line that gets back Tomari Fox, who missed last season due to suspension.
“I think overall, defensively, we’ll be a much better unit than we were,” Chizik said. “I feel good about us being a more consistent defense. You have a list of things you want to do — limit explosive plays, stop the run, those things — but in the end, we just have to be more consistent.”
The offense is led by Drake Maye at quarterback, but the leader on the coaching staff has changed, with Chip Lindsey replacing Phil Longo as offensive coordinator.
The Heels return four starters on the offensive line as well as several other players who saw time last season. There’s a rotation of running backs who have experience but are not big names, and the receiving corps is deep and promising and could still get better. Carolina is hopeful that Tez Walker, a big-play receiver who transferred from Kent State, will get clearance to play from the NCAA at some point before kickoff on Saturday.
“What we’ve got to do is have two game plans,” Brown said. “We’ve got to have one game plan with Tez and one without him.”
Whichever plan the Tar Heels end up using, it will need to be executed to perfection against a South Carolina team that upset the Tar Heels in the Duke’s Mayo Bowl in 2021, part of the current three-year bowl losing streak under Brown.
While the opener is as far removed from a postseason game as you can get, it’s still circled on the UNC schedule. Get past the Gamecocks and a 5-0 start is potentially in the cards for the Tar Heels. Looking at the schedule, a 10-0 run heading into Clemson is not out of the realm of possibility.
The key is a simple one. Just do better.
“We’re jumping in with both feet,” he said. “We lost respect at the end of last year. We’re trying to get that respect back.”
