When Tar Heel head coach Mack Brown stepped up to the stand to talk to the media on Monday, there was still some uncertainty about whether or not he was planning to stay on as the head coach of the football program. He put those questions to rest quickly, apologizing for his actions in the locker room after the game on Saturday to start the presser and reaffirming that he will be coaching the team moving forward.
“As I was walking off the field, I thought, 'I'm responsible for all this.' It's on me, so I should ask the players about leadership, if they feel good about me moving forward. And that's something I shouldn't do. I shouldn't put that pressure on those young people at that point. And I'm supposed to be a leader, and probably the worst things I've ever said in my life are after losses. You all have heard most of them, and that's just what I do. So disappointed in me.”
Brown said that while he did say that he told the players he would step away if he was the problem, those comments were taken out of context. “What I said is, if you all don't feel like I'm the leader you need, then I'll go do something else. And they said, 'No, man, we're in. Let's go.' It was overwhelming. I wish I hadn't put them in that spot. So, but that's all it was. And if I was going to quit, I'd have come in here and done it. I asked them if they wanted new leadership, and they said, 'No.' I backed away to think about it. I told them, 'let's go. Let's go forward. Let's get ready for Duke' right afterwards."
Brown was also not happy that what was said in the locker room didn’t stay there. "Things used to stay in the locker room. The locker room was sacred. It's obviously not anymore.”
One other thing to note was that a program spokesperson said Tar Heel players will not be made available to the media this week after they weren’t made available after the game on Saturday. The spokesperson said that they are “just letting them focus on Duke”, something that shouldn’t be shocking considering the majority of questions that they would receive would be centered around what happened in the locker room on Saturday. The focus for these guys needs to be on refocusing after what happened on the field against James Madison and making sure it doesn’t send the season into a spiral like we’ve seen happen in the last two seasons when the team has lost a game as a double-digit favorite.
It seems like this was all something that was taken out of context in a moment of anger following the most embarrassing loss of the Mack Brown 2.0 era. Let’s hope this is a moment that rallies this team and can be seen as more of the jumping-off point of this season and not the beginning of the end for Brown.
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