Mack Brown addresses whether or not expectations got too high for this UNC team

North Carolina started the season off strong but struggled down the stretch, losing three straight games to end the season capped off by a 39-10 loss to Clemson in the ACC Championship game Saturday. With freshman phenom quarterback Drake Maye leading them to six straight wins prior to their losing skid, there was plenty of hype and high expectations for the Tar Heels, and head coach Mack Brown was asked if those expectations were unfairly too high for his team.

“I don’t have any idea what they were, we wanna win every game,” Brown said. “As I’ve said, this team’s been in the championship game twice ever since 2012 so that’s a really really good accomplishment.”

The Tar Heels’ conclusion to the season did not go as planned for them, but Brown didn’t let that take away from the progress the program was able to achieve this year.

“We lost seven games last year and we won nine this year, so that’s a tremendous amount of progress, we’re playing one of the best teams in the country that unless they lost by one point last week they would be in the final four,” Brown said.

Clemson did look like one of the best teams in the country versus North Carolina in the title game, with a strong defensive performance and an unexpected, impressive performance from true freshman quarterback Cade Klubik. Klubnik got his first taste of extended snaps on the biggest stage of the season for the Tigers and had a field day, completing 83% of his passes and finding the end zone twice on his way to a victory.

It’s no secret that the Tar Heels lack the championship experience that the Tigers have, who on Saturday made their tenth conference title game appearance under Dabo Swinney and secured their eighth conference championship victory.

“So it shows you where we are and we’re making progress, but it also shows you what we’ve got to do to get better,” Brown said.

Brown is only in the fourth season of his return to Chapel Hill, leading them to their first conference championship appearance this year under his new regime. They have a lot of young pieces including Maye, as they boasted the ACC’s No. 1 recruiting class in 2022 according to On3 Consensus. They may have come up short this season, but will certainly have a case to be conference title contenders next season behind the leadership of Brown.