Mack Brown says energy was lacking early vs. Wake Forest; pleased with fight, likes how UNC has responded

Opening comments

“We'll go back over the the Wake game briefly. Talking to the players yesterday, I said, ‘Why do you think we lost?’ I asked the older guys and in every case they said, ‘Coach, we didn't have the same passion to start the game as we did against South Carolina and Miami.’ And I thought that was true. So I was glad that they realized that. Our job as coaches and their job as players is to create an edge every week and make sure that they're passionate about it and ready to go. On the other hand, they played really hard, so there is a separation of passion and energy on Friday night. There was never a time when they didn’t try hard in the game. And then obviously it was a different second half. They came out with more energy and came out with a focus and understood we dug ourselves a big hole against a good team and needed to work our way out of it. Wake was more ready to start the game than we were. That’s just part of the learning curve that we've got to get through right now.

“You play South Carolina, you play Miami, you play Wake, all three teams are very good. And you’ve got to play hard every week for us to have a chance to win. And this week will be no different. I also told the guys that you watch the video of these guys, they're not going to be the same team that you see. Wake Forest played much better against us than they did with Utah State and Rice. And that's the way it's going to be this weekend with Appalachian State, so just understand that.

“Third downs on offense have been atrocious because we're not putting ourselves in a position to make them. It's first and second down that’s causing third down to be so hard. So we've got to do a better job on first and second downs to have manageable third down situations so we can make them. Opposite of that, we're doing really well on third downs on defense. We’re getting off the field and our defense had nine stops without them scoring in a row. So the defense also kept them from getting a 3-and-1 and a 4-and-1. That would have put us down 28-0 with the 4-and-1, so the defense gave us a chance to win the game. And then on the last drive for Wake Forest, there's six minutes and something left. We've got three timeouts so if the defense steps up and stops them there then we have a great chance to win the game, but they went the length of the field and took away our three time outs and then put us in a position where they kicked the field goal.

“So give Wake Forest credit because they made the plays the last bit of game instead of us. The one second left on the clock – the conference office addressed it. We should have had one more shot at the end zone and we didn’t, but it is what it is. So the congratulations to Wake Forest. The other thing that we have done pretty well is we've taken care of the ball. But we have not taken the ball away much. We haven't recovered a fumble yet this year, which is unacceptable. So we have three interceptions, so we're minus-two and plus-three, so we're plus-one for the year on turnovers. But we’ve got to do a better job than that to keep winning.

“When you start looking at App State, look at what their seniors accomplished the last few years, it's the best in our state. App State’s good enough they could be in the ACC. They're that talented. You start looking at 2018 they were 11-2. In 2017, they were 9-4. That was their bad year. 2016 they were 10-3, 2015 they were 11-3.

Coach Woods was there, who’s working for us now; he did a great job and went to South Carolina. Jerry Moore won three national championships while he was there. Scott Satterfield did such a tremendous job that he had those last four seasons and Eliah Drinkwitz is coming in at 2-0 with a week off and fresh and excited about coming in here. This will be the second time that we've ever played Appalachian State. So what I told the guys is you play South Carolina, Miami, Wake and now you've got App State who will have a lot of energy on Saturday and then you’ve got Clemson in your first five. And that's probably as tough of a schedule as anybody’s got across the country. That's why we’ve got guys banged up and tired and they’ve still got to play. You are who you are on Saturday. And we've done a tremendous job in fourth quarters. We’ve got to do a better job of being more consistent, especially offensively during the game.”

The human nature aspect of the loss to Wake Forest and how long it took his teams at Texas to work past that

“You've got to learn that, but you also need depth. At Texas we had depth. And when you don't have depth, you get injuries and when you have injuries, you've got younger guys playing that are not as mature and they don't understand that as much. But I think that the biggest thing is as coaches and as players, we all have to grow together and understand that we're not good enough to beat anybody unless we're playing with passion. That's what we’ve got to do. We had the chance to come back, but at this stage in our program, we can't roll it out there against anybody and that's hard. Frank Broyles told me a long time ago that you better be better than seven teams on your schedule to have a good year. That's when were playing 11. Because, he said, you're probably only going to play with great emotion in four of those 11.

“Fans can't possibly understand that. I don't understand it, but I get it because these kids get tired and they’ve got a lot of things going on in their lives. But the best teams have to play every week and that's what we've got to learn to do.”

Do you like how the team has responded?

“Absolutely. I thought the passion and the effort they played with the second half was unbelievable because most people can’t flip it. And they flipped it and pretty much dominated in the second half and they did a great job. Just put ourselves in a hole we couldn't come back from. Sunday's meeting was really, really good. No finger pointing and there was no, ‘you should have done this and you should have done that. The offense couldn’t score early.’ It was all about, ‘Coach, we tried, we just didn't have the same spirit that we had in the first few minutes.’”

Do you foresee it being beneficial for this team to have this shared learning experience?

“I do and I don't want to take anything away from Wake Forest. They played with passion. They played hard and won the game. But on the other side, I think we'll see this weekend how much we learned from last weekend. Appalachian State's got really good players that are going to come in with high energy. I think even Corey Sutton, their great receiver is probably going to play this weekend and he hadn’t yet. He caught 10 touchdown passes last year and he's 6-3, 200 pounds. We let Surratt kill us last week. They targeted him nine times in the first half and they hit seven for 157 yards and broke a school record and we were trying to be all over him. I’m glad they paid him attention. But I think that's the thing we'll find out this weekend. We need our fans to come with the same energy even though it'll be hot on the Saturday afternoon like they did for Miami. Our fans and our students need to be up a huge difference in this ball game for us and pick this team back up. Our team and coaches have to come out and do a better job than they did last week.

On third down problems:

“We're just not doing well on first downs and even a couple of times we were 2-and-5 and then we get a sack. We're having way too many sacks. We had six sacks Friday night. And I've told our coaches that's on coaching, that's on coaching. If your guy is not good enough to block their guy, then you've got to get him some help or you've got to do something different for your quarterback. We can't just sit there and be sacked and say, ‘oh, that’s too bad.’ I mean, we've got to fix those things. But that's what's happening.”

What made Appalachian State the choice for your first job?

“I wanted to be a head coach so badly and Steve Sloan and Bill Battle were two of my idols and mentors at that time. They were both very young head coaches. I loved the mountains of North Carolina. Growing up in middle Tennessee on lakes and I just fell in love with Appalachian State. Actually interviewed at East Tennessee State and then Jim Garner, who was the athletics director at that time, drove across the mountain to pick me up. And I stood out on the street corner and Jim picked me up and he drove me to Boone. And I couldn't believe when I pulled into Boone, it was night, but those mountains were so high and I'd never seen mountains that high. And the lights in the houses were way up there. And I said, ‘Jim, what is that?’ And he said, ‘that’s a house, they're that far up in the mountains.’

“And then when I was coaching there, Hugh Morton, who was a mountain of a man and basically owned Grandfather Mountain and he's a photographer. He was an entrepreneur for this state. He was one of my best friends and he invited the media of the ACC up every year to play golf for a couple of days up in the mountains of North Carolina. So I was standing on his porch, there's a 40-acre trout lake there. And I was making $38,500 as the head coach at Appalachian State and hadn’t won a game. And I told Mr. Morton, if I make some money, I'm going to live on this lake. And we've lived on the lake now for, oh gosh, 22 years, I think. And just loving it up there the last five years. We spent a little less than six months in the mountains of North Carolina. So I love Appalachian State. I love Boone. It's a place I go every chance I get and fell in love with the place and the people in the mountains of North Carolina.”

Back then, did you ever foresee that program becoming what it is today?

“You know what, I didn’t because I was in my early 30s, I think, maybe 32 or maybe less than that. I think I came here at 35, so it might have been in my late 20s. And when I got there we didn’t have dealer cars. We were driving state cars that we had to check out. We had to teach class. They only allowed you to take 33 out-of-state players because it was too expensive for an out-of-state scholarship compared to an in-state scholarship. I think our equipment manager was a student. Our trainer was a student or really, really young. I think I was our SID when we got there, because I remember trying to put things together to have a media guide. But to see what that program has turned into, is just really, really rewarding for me. I used to tell Jerry Moore, who is a dear friend of mine, when he won the three National Champions, ‘You know I started that. I am really the reason you won. It was just 20 years later or 15 whatever it was that my and Sparky (Woods) coaching kicked in.’ I am really, really proud of them. It will be a difficult game for us this weekend.”

How do you think Sam Howell performed in the first half? Do you think he was nervous and not really letting it go?

"I think we played very poorly, offensively, in the first half. Period. And when you play that poorly as a group it all goes back to the quarterback because everybody sees him. We didn’t help him. And the reason we changed and took him out was because it wasn’t working. Jace needed to get some time anyway. He came in and got us off the goal line and probably saved us from being backed up and being in trouble. And we also thought it would give our other freshman quarterback a chance to go over there and stand and watch and see what is happening out there because the game was going faster than we were. And then he played much better in the second half.”

How did Sam respond to the change and putting Jace in?

“Sam was great. He and Jace have been really, really good friends. In fact I think I heard one of them say to the other one, ‘I wasn’t doing well. So Jace should have gone in. He did great when he got in there.’ And we need to get Jace more snaps. We’ve tried. Our games have all come down to the last play of the game, so it has been hard to substitute in many areas.”

Do you foresee using Jace more to get a spark in the run game?

“We might. We’d like to for sure. Coach Longo and I have been talking about it. I’d like to play him every game and that is important for us to make sure we establish two quarterbacks. I think everybody in the country — now you are seeing guys going down every week, so it can happen. So you just got to be prepared.”

Sam had another strong fourth quarter, do you think long term that shows something special about him that once he gets a few things figured out those fourth quarters can be first quarters and second quarters and so on?

“We’ve got to do a better job of helping him not have the pressure he’s had on him. He has taken too many hits, No. 1. Secondly, I’ve been amazed at his maturity and his confidence because very few could have pulled out after what that first half was like and not be frustrated at his age and his lack of experienced and played as well as he did in the second half. We are 18th in the country in plays over 20 yards, so we missed a couple of deep ones the other night, but he’s got tremendous touch on the deep ball, and that has been helping us a lot.”

What specifically have you seen from Appalachian State about their game plan and what impresses you?

“I would think they were able to beat Charlotte and East Tennessee easily, they got Corey Sutton coming back. They’ve got two weeks to prepare, just like Miami did and Wake Forest had one extra day after their Rice game to prepare. So I think we’ll see all kinds of things. They are going to pull out all the tricks and obviously their conference helped them by giving them a week off before they play us. So we’ll see the energy like we saw out of Wake on Friday night and I think we’ll also see stuff they haven’t seen before.”

How are you managing injuries this week?

“We’ve got to figure that out with injuries. We just got to see who can practice and see who is sore and can’t practice on Tuesday as compared to how well they will be by game time. And we are just going to have to start playing other players. We are just going to play young guys….We thought Jason (Strowbridge) was going to play until pregame and he didn't. I challenged our trainers to make sure they test them here before we get on the bus and go because everyone thought he was going to play. I think he thought he was going to play. And then he couldn’t when he got out there.

“There has been way too much talk about injuries in this program the last two years. I have told the guys, ‘I don’t want to hear it.’ It’s an excuse. It’s a valid excuse. But we are not going to use it as an excuse because it gives the players and coaches to blame losses on something else other than just, ‘We should have won the game.’ That’s not where we are going.”

How did Joshua Ezeudu grade out?

“He did real well. That’s what we are going to have to start doing. Asim Richards and Triston Miller and Ty Murray. All those guys. Ezeudu did pretty good, especially for his first time out there.”

How much did not having Jason Strowbridge in the lineup affect the defensive line?

“He is probably our best player and he is definitely our best pass rusher. And he is a senior and a leader, so you’d sure rather him be out there. We did not get much pressure on the passer. They did a good job with Fox, of making sure that they had guys around him where he had trouble getting there. So We didn’t get the pressure on the passer that we needed last week.”

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