Brown says defense "whooped" offense in scrimmage

CHAPEL HILL — Mack Brown didn’t mince words when it came to his assessment of Saturday’s scrimmage.

“I think the separation yesterday was that the defense really whooped the offense and that’s good for us,” he said. “We haven’t been consistently good on defense.”

Brown spoke at length for more than 10 minutes on Sunday afternoon touching on a number of topics, but his assessment of the scrimmage dominated the conversation.

Saturday afternoon, players pointed to a strong defensive performance and an offense that moved the ball at times, but was ultimately undone by mistakes.

After watching the film, Brown’s assessment backed that up.

“The defense looked really good,” he said. “They forced turnovers, they flew around, they chased the ball —especially the first defense. Offense was ready to play, we thought, but they moved the ball some; they just weren’t consistent and weren’t focused which is an area that we’ve really got to address.”

Brown said there were two interceptions, a fumble inside the 5-yard line and a holding penalty at the 15-yard line that ultimately cost the Tar Heel offense.

“We’ve just got to focus,” tight end Carl Tucker said. “We’re close, but we’re still far away. We just need to work on a lot of little things to get us over the hump, and let’s work on those little things that get us over the hump, as well as get our confidence up. Once we have our confidence, we’re unstoppable.”

That’s something the offense can look across the scrimmage for at the moment, in a stark contrast to the spring when the offense held the upper hand.

“By and large, the defense should be ahead of the offense and they are,” Brown said. “I told the offense last night, ‘You need to get the swagger and the confidence that the defense is getting, and the only way you can do that is whoop them and move the ball.’”

Brown was pleased with how the offense responded to the lesson on Sunday morning.

“We addressed all that with the offense yesterday and we had by far our best practice today,” he said. “Offense and defense competed and it was a really good team practice.”

The scrimmage and offensive inconsistency didn’t bring the Tar Heels any closer to deciding on a quarterback, however.

Jace Ruder, one of three players battling for the starting job, sat out what was characterized as a lower-body injury, before returning to practice on Sunday. That left sophomore Cade Fortin and Sam Howell in command, but Brown didn’t want to put all of the struggles on their shoulders.

“Cade and Sam competed but the offense was inconsistent, so we had dropped balls, we had interceptions,” he said. “Neither quarterback separated yesterday.

“They’re understanding the offense did not play well, so right now, it’s not about the quarterback — it’s about the whole offense getting better so we can decide on a quarterback.”

That’s something he’s said he expects to begin taking shape next weekend when the Tar Heels scrimmage for the second time on Saturday.

Still, Tucker was more encouraged by some of the positives that he saw from the offense rather than discouraged by the mistakes that popped up near the goal line.

“It was encouraging just to see the only thing holding us back are the little mistakes,” Tucker said. “It’s good to know it’s not an athletic problem, not a personal problem, it’s just a mental problem. We have guys that, it’ll be fixed. It takes a day to get that fixed and they all know what that is now, and it’s gone.”

And while Brown knows the Carolina offense has plenty to learn, he’s happy its his own defense delivering those lessons rather than an opponent’s.

“It’s really, really good right now that the defense is stepping up and pressing the offense and making them get tougher and making them make better decisions and making them compete harder, so that’s really helping us right now,” he said. “We’d rather find out we’ve got some issues we’ve got to fix right now, rather than the Sunday after South Carolina.”

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