Mack Brown addresses UNC's poor record after bye week during his tenure

North Carolina is now 6-1 in 2022 and recently joined the Top 25 after a road win over Duke. However, the Tar Heels have perhaps their most difficult yet unexpected challenge ahead given the team’s recent history of bye week issues. Under head coach Mack Brown, they are just 1-5 in games immediately following a bye week on the schedule.

Of the five losses, three came against Notre Dame, with the other two going to at least one overtime period to determine a winner. Virginia Tech came out on top in six overtimes and Pittsburgh won in one overtime period the same season. The only win after a layoff came in 2020, when North Carolina got three weeks to prepare for Boston College after a COVID-19 schedule change.

During his bye week press conference, Mack Brown addressed the strange bye week stat and assured the media that his team remained locked in on the upcoming game against Pittsburgh just like any other week with half the time to prepare.

“Those were all tough games,” said Brown. “We had a chance to win them. I think what we’re doing with the open date is fair and good, we’ve just got to play better.”

Mack Brown on growth of North Carolina team

North Carolina pulled off a come-from-behind win against rival Duke this weekend defeating the Blue Devils 38-35 thanks to a go-ahead touchdown pass from quarterback Drake Maye to receiver Antoine Green with 16 seconds left in the ballgame. Tar Heels head coach Mack Brown is happy with the play of his squad and believes they have improved since the start of the season.

“They’re playing really hard to the standard I want now, we didn’t at the first of the year all the time, they’re playing with confidence, they didn’t get bad body language and give up,” Brown said. “But we’ve still got so many things we can fix and we can play so much better, and that’s the fun part of this team.”

Their win over Duke extended the Tar Heel’s win streak to three games, all to conference opponents, which has them sitting as the No. 1 seed currently in the ACC Coastal division. UNC may be rolling right now, but Brown still believes there’s room for growth for his team.

“There’s an upside here that we haven’t even scratched and we’ve got to continue to get better in the running game, we got to continue to not take sacks, we’ve got to stop the run better in the first half,” Brown said.