Tar Heels can’t make clean break until they wash away the past
There’s a new coaching staff and a new quarterback and new turf in Kenan Stadium and, apparently, new durability, considering North Carolina made it through its preseason practices without an injury to report. Even the old (as in former) coach is new again.
It’s a fresh start for everyone, even Mack Brown, and with so much change in the air -- and on the ground -- it would seem too easy to turn the page from the two dismal seasons that preceded all the upheaval and begin anew. That’s all Brown has told the team. There is no history. The future is now, as Waring Hudsucker once said.
“We’ve talked to our guys about how this is about now,” Brown said Monday. “It’s not about my past. It’s not about their past. It’s about what we do starting on Saturday. It’s a new era, whatever you want to call it, but their legacy will be this team, this year, and especially the seniors.”
That all sounds great as the season opener against South Carolina in Charlotte approaches with astonishing speed but it turns out the baggage of years past is a little tougher to shed. Brown likes to talk about how his best teams led themselves, from within, with strong leaders and stronger verbiage.
This group? The quietest he has ever coached. Which Brown understands: It’s a (Red Bull) hangover, the product of a 2-14 ACC record over the past two seasons, and seven losses by a combined 46 points last season. It’s difficult to speak with authority when you haven’t had a chance to build any.
For Brown, it was crystallized in a moment at his women’s football clinic this summer, running back Antonio Williams was asked by one of the attendees what the team’s biggest challenge was this season. His answer, according to Brown: “Lack of confidence.”
Starting fresh with a blank slate only works when the slate can be cleaned, and the Tar Heels’ misgivings, bad habits and self-doubts might as well have been written in Sharpie. (In some cases, it’s even more concrete: Patrice Rene and Dominque Ross will each be suspended for a half Saturday, fallout from the brawl at the end of the N.C. State loss.) The main question the Tar Heels had for Brown as they got to know the new coach: How do we win?
“We’ve tried to point out every day in practice, here’s why you win and here’s why you lose,” Brown said. “We had entirely too many penalties last year and too many unsportsmanlike penalties. We can’t do that. We’re not better than anybody on our schedule. So we’ve got to be good at everything we do. We actually quit calling them the little things. They’re all big things.”
The reality is this season is going to be a learning experience, for players and fans alike, headed into the teeth of a difficult opening schedule with a true freshman quarterback -- Brown confirmed Sam Howell will start for Saturday -- and schematic changes on both side of the ball. Larry Fedora left some talent behind, but how the Tar Heels far will have less to do with their physical ability than their mental acuity.
It’s only a clean start if you actually start clean. The Tar Heels may have purged the past in August, or it may still be clinging to them like a film they can’t wash off, not right away anyway.
At the same time the Tar Heels have gone back to the distant past with Brown, they’re trying to leave as much of the recent past behind as they can, but they can’t really move into the future until they reckon with everything that led them here.
UNC vs. South Carolina
When: 3:30 p.m., Saturday
Where: Bank of America Stadium, Charlotte
Watch: ESPN
