Mack Brown on worry ahead of Georgia Tech game: Everyone will be bragging on our guys

North Carolina is circling the College Football Playoff. With just one loss on the year and a spot locked up in the ACC title game against Clemson, the Tar Heels are dreaming of playing for that national title trophy. But before any of that is possible, UNC still needs to take care of business against Georgia Tech and NC State.

With the State game being a rivalry matchup, head coach Mack Brown is really concerned about a potential letdown in the Tech game.

“Everybody will be bragging on our guys and everybody talking about clenching the the ACC Coastal, getting ready to go to the championship game, asking about tickets. And then you got your rival next week and senior day. But this one’s sitting in here where we better get ready to play. So this will be a really good test to see how we’ve matured,” Brown said ahead of the Heels’ penultimate regular season contest.

He remembers a certain game last season where his team performed poorly in a low-profile matchup.

“We didn’t play great at Virginia when there wasn’t a lot of talk about the game, and there won’t be as much talk about this game publicly as there will be the State game and the the championship game. So we’ll have to get our minds ready to go. Because anybody watches that film last year, they got good enough players and they absolutely whipped us in every way and out coached us.”

Mack Brown went on to share his message to the team ahead of the game against the Yellow Jackets. According to him, if this team wants to really go down in Tar Heel history, they need to take care of business against GT. Or else, all those CFP pipe dreams are out the window.

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“This is a good team, and you can either become a great team — because the story is not finished yet — or you can go stand around the next couple of weeks and be a good team. There’s a lot of teams that have won nine games in in North Carolina history. You can be one of those that accomplishes things that haven’t been accomplished very often around here, and it’s totally up to you and your mindset if our program’s where it needs to be.

“We took us another step by beating Wake Forest. We took a step because we’d never won six on the road, we took a step because we hadn’t won the Coastal since 2015. So those were major steps. Now, can you take another step? Another step is going to be beaten Georgia Tech when a lot of people will be talking about something else. And I said they’re going to have a lot of distractions this week with people bragging on you. Lose to Georgia Tech and that all stops. So you need to get ready to play.”

So strap that helmet on and get ready to play just as hard in this game as every other one. Because Mack Brown knows Georgia Tech will bring the effort.

“And Georgia Tech’s gonna play hard, we know that,” Brown said. “They’re trying to get some things accomplished. I also told them it’s a great teachable moment, because one of the toughest things in our life is complacency when we’ve accomplished something that people didn’t think we could. So this is a great moment to see how we’ve matured as a program.”