Carolina could have quit at halftime. Instead, the Tar Heels showed Mack Brown they'll fight their guts out

Brown impressed with team's fight in second half

WINSTON-SALEM — Not everything in sports is the week-to-week referendum some sections of every fanbase seems to believe, but if there’s been one for the first stage of Mack Brown’s rebuild at North Carolina, it arrived about 7:35 p.m. on Friday night.

Trailing Wake Forest 21-0 and outgained 304-71 yards, the Tar Heels faced the biggest adversity of their young season.

Brown told his team it had a simple decision to make.

“You are who you are, but if you go out there and lay down in the second half, you’re a team that believes that,” he said. “If you go out and fight your guts outs, then that’s who you are.”

On a muggy night away from home, Carolina could have packed it in. The injury bug was hitting hard in a nonconference matchup that will ultimately have little bearing in the big picture and the offense had shown no reason to believe it could catch the Deacons.

Instead, the Tar Heels did what they’ve done all season in saving their best for last.

After Sage Surratt and Jamie Newman went over, through and around the Carolina defense in the first half, the Tar Heels locked in to force Wake Forest to punt on its first two drives of the second half before Myles Dorn’s interception.

Despite the beating he took in the first half, Sam Howell stayed the course and the offense finally started hitting on all cylinders toward the end of the third quarter.

“He’s really tough,” Brown said. “For him to struggle like he did and for him to pick people up and come back and have a chance to win the game, that’s a real credit to him.”

Carolina ended up with the ball and a chance to win the game, but the offense wasn’t up to the task this time and clock management was an issue, ending as Michael Carter stepped out of bounds on a controversial play that saw officials leave the field as the Tar Heels protested for a review.

Rather than dwelling in what might have been and talking about moral victories, the Tar Heels were crushed by the loss and didn’t want to blame any of the litany of key injuries.

“It’s on my shoulders it’s on all our shoulders, the fifth-years and the fourth-years I came in with,” Aaron Crawford said. “We all have to do more. When one soldier falls, another man is supposed to come up and take his place, and that’s what we’re supposed to do.”

It’s almost like they couldn’t take the blame fast enough.

“I thought it was going to be the last play of the game and that was a mental error by me,” Carter said of the last play.

“It was 100 percent on me,” Howell countered. “Everybody on the offense was playing their ass off and I’ve just got to do a better job.”

Carolina is still a flawed football team and the fragility of its depth showed on Saturday when both the offensive and defensive lines struggled in the absence of a starter, but there’s certainly not a depth of leadership emerging for the Tar Heels.

“What I learned is that they really want to be good,” Brown said. “I learned that we weren’t mature enough and our coaches and I didn’t do a good enough job of getting them through the first two games, getting over the Miami game and preparing for this one emotionally. I didn’t think we played well emotionally in the first half.”

Ultimately, Brown’s team fought its guts out down the stretch and that’s who he believes they are.

There's no doubt the program's culture-change is more than hollow words that made a nice talking point in the preseason.

“That’s what they did, so I’m really proud of them,” he said. “I can go home and fix all the things we messed up.”