Mack Brown discusses improved defense, need for further improvement

North Carolina is 3-0, somehow. After a pair of barn-burners vs. Sun Belt squads and a decimation of Florida A&M in Week 0, the Tar Heels enter their game vs. Notre Dame undefeated. Mostly on the back of their offense, which has eclipsed five touchdowns in every outing thus far.

The defense, however, has been a whole other story. UNC surrendered 61 points to Appalachian State and gave up four touchdowns vs. Georgia State in games they easily could have lost. Even in their Week 0 win they allowed 24 points to an FCS team. Just not the results head coach Mack Brown is looking for out of his defensive unit.

After that Georgia State game, Brown reflected on his team’s poor performance on that end of the ball and pointed out a few times this season where the defense has stepped up to seal the game, like they did vs. GA State.

“Yeah, they’ve got a tremendous amount of pride,” Brown said of his defense. “But I’ve told them we haven’t consistently been good on defense since we’ve been here. And you’re not going to win a bunch of games that way. So you get great on defense. We’ve had some great defensive days, but we haven’t been consistently good.”

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Brown then continued, remarking on how his team sort of lost focus on defense and were a bit lethargic after going up big vs. the Panthers.

“One of the problems was when you you get ahead you look at the scoreboard and they just run up and down the field, because you you feel like you’re in pretty good shape, like last week. We can’t give them a 98-yard drive. We can’t give them a drive right before the half. Or when it was 21-3, we can’t let them go score. That’s a critical point in the game. So there’s times that we can change.”

Lastly, Mack Brown wrapped up his comments on defense by giving his guys credit where they actually deserve some.

“Like the start of the second half, they just drive right down and score. And you can’t do that. But when it mattered in the fourth quarter, they stepped up. So that, we call it teachable moments. We will have a lot of video for them to say ‘this is what we’re talking about now. You won the game. You won the game because you made these four stops in a row after turnovers and forced punts and and that’s what we’re talking about.'”