Brown hoping Heels break their silence before Saturday

Mack Brown is trying to deliver a message to his football team, but don’t expect to see the hall of fame coach ranting and raving in the locker room before North Carolina takes the field on Saturday.

It’s just not his style and never has been.

“I think they need to see me as who I am, and if I change drastically between now and game-time they’re going to think I’m nervous and uptight,” he said. “Then, they’re going to get nervous and uptight. They need to know I’ve done this before, for 31 years, and I’m going to help them on their sideline and the coaches are there to help them on the sideline.”

That doesn’t mean he wouldn’t mind seeing a little bit of ranting and raving from someone — just not him or his coaches. Those 31 years have taught him that territory is best occupied by his players, and if the responsibility indeed falls to him or the staff, the Tar Heels might be in for a bumpy ride.

“We’ve said that coach-led teams are very average, player-led teams are very good,” Brown said. “The best teams I’ve ever coached, the players on the field and in the locker room handled all of it. They told them to shut up and do this and act right and play harder.”

Brown’s best teams at Carolina and Texas played with a certain swag and weren’t afraid to show their edge.

Before leading the Longhorns to victory over Southern California in the 2006 Rose Bowl, Vince Young reveled in just how confident and vocal Texas would be against a Trojans program that had won 34 straight games.

“They haven't seen the different guys on our team who are gangster," Young told Sports Illustrated in 2005. "We've got some guys who will talk some trash. The teams they've played don't say anything back.”

Before these Tar Heels even think about talking trash on the field, they’ve got to start talking tough to one another.

“This team has been very quiet; they’re not a vocal team,” Brown said. “They laugh and cut up, but they don’t call each other out.”

Players have made strides in that regard, particularly with the summer workouts bringing out the leadership qualities of some, but largely, Brown is still waiting.

“There’s usually one guy that stirs them all up and right now, we don’t have that guy,” Brown said. “We need a guy to stir the pot with.”

That’s not surprising, considering where this team has been, going 5-18 over the past two seasons. It’s not only the losses, but how they’ve happened that have crushed the Tar Heels’ confidence, often following a predictable formula of snatching defeat from the jaws of victory.

“We’re a group that wants to be labeled as tough, confident and winners because we haven’t been that,” running back Michael Carter said.

As Brown awaits the arrival of vocal leaders, Carter is among the players that teammates look to for leadership.

The junior running back is experienced and thoughtful and has the on-field role necessary to lead but doesn’t view himself as a big rah-rah guy.

“Ray Lewis was very vocal, Ed Reed was very vocal,” he said. “You look at that whole era and it was more confrontational than it is now and if you get a leader like that in this era, it’s rare. I don’t know if all players respond to that like they used to.”

So thoughtful in fact, that he understands that talking too much could lessen the weight of his words.

“I’ve always been pretty vocal, but I just think after a while, when you get to a place when you have the same boss for a while, their words start to lose value,” he said. “Being in a leadership position, you’ve got to find different ways to talk to different people because not everybody is the same. I just feel like my passion for the game, that’s where my leadership has to come from, You’ve got to come from, ‘I want this for the team, I want this for us, not because I just like telling you what to do.’ I’ve never been like that.”

It’s a work in progress for the offense, where freshman quarterback Sam Howell is still finding his voice while Nick Polino is trying to speak up even more after moving to center.

On defense, both of the Myles at safety — Dorn and Wolfolk — have committed themselves to leading and up front, there’s no doubt Aaron Crawford and Jason Strowbridge have the respect of their teammates.

Neither, however, are the type to deliver a pregame speech. Instead, Crawford said he’d deliver a simple message.

“Trust yourself, trust your instincts and trust what we’ve been building,” he said. “I feel like we’ve put a l lot of work into this point and if we rely on our fundamentals, we’ll be OK.”

OK isn’t enough though, and it’s Brown’s hope that Saturday, the heat of action and the arrival of adversity will cause someone to break the silence.

“It’s just a team that I think, they’re probably a little bit of that lack of confidence is why they’ve been like this,” he said. “Now it’s time to be aggressive and go. I told them Saturday, when adversity hits, you get stronger and you have better body language, because It’s going to come. The team that overcomes adversity the best is going to be the team with the best chance to win.”