North Carolina Tar Heels College Football Preview 2021: What Will Happen, Season Prediction
Mack Brown has always occupied an interesting space in the college football coaching world.
He’s already in the College Football Hall of Fame, he’s still a phenomenal recruiter, he won a whole lot of games, and above all else, he’s a good dude.
Brilliant with the alumni, great with the media, and again, terrific when it comes time to sell a kid on a school, he’s a special head coach and – arguably – a bit underappreciated and underrated.
The 2005 Texas team will always be remembered for “the Vince Young game” in the historic national championship win over USC, but Brown doesn’t get enough credit for how he and his staff had the Longhorns laser-focused all year and frothing at the mouth for that one giant game.
That was as ready and as prepared a team for the moment as possible.
But as amazing as his time at Texas was, Oklahoma was a brick wall that was seemingly always in the way, just like Florida State was the barrier in Brown’s first run at North Carolina and Clemson is now.
But after just two years of a rebuild, Brown has the guys, and he’s got the schedule to possibly have that big breakthrough season that feels so very close.
Set The North Carolina Tar Heels Regular Season Win Total At … 9.5
A few key guys sat out late in 2020 so there’s a technicality to this, but yeah, around 20 starters from the Orange Bowl loss to Texas A&M are expected to be back.
Sam Howell might be the top quarterback off the board in the 2023 NFL Draft, the defense is loaded with soon-to-be All-ACC stars, and there’s a whole lot of talented depth to go along with the veterans up top.
And there’s no Clemson on the slate.
There’s still a prove it factor, though, considering North Carolina lost to Florida State and Virginia – and the 15-10 record over the last two years under Brown isn’t that great – but again, start with not having to deal with Clemson and go from there.
There’s the unfortunate road game against a Notre Dame program that’s kept around by the ACC to screw things up for its full-member schools, and the date at Virginia Tech to start the season and at NC State to end it are nasty, but go ahead and call this the second-best team in the ACC – it’s supposed to win those tough games.
Texas didn’t get to double-digit wins until Brown’s fourth year, and he didn’t get North Carolina to ten wins until six years into his first run.
This year’s team might do it after just two seasons.
This year’s team might become a real, live challenger for the ACC Championship.
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– What You Need To Know: Offense | Defense
– Top Players | Keys To The Season
– North Carolina Schedule Analysis