2022 SUBWAY ACC FOOTBALL CHAMPIONSHIP GAME: CLEMSON VS NORTH CAROLINA

December 3, 2022

Mack Brown

Bank of America Stadium

North Carolina Tar Heels

Postgame Press Conference

Clemson 39, North Carolina 10

MACK BROWN: Good for us to get here; now we've got to learn how to play. Got to learn how to win. We've got to learn how to win. Thought they tried hard but, you're one out of five in red zone touchdowns. You have two turnovers that lead to 14 points. You have a blocked field goal. You're not going to win many games.

We've got to score more points in the red zone.

Questions?

Q. What can you pinpoint that went wrong today that was a connection to the last two weeks?

MACK BROWN: Well, let me repeat the opening statement: We were one out of five in touchdowns in the red zone. If you're going to do that, you're not going to win games.

We felt like with DJ we were going to make him beat us. We were going to stop the run, so we stocked the box. They put in Cade, and Cade played great, so we had to adjust and try to come after him with really young secondary people in the second half.

So that really put us in a bind.

And we had two turnovers that let to 14 points, one at the 24 yard line, one an interception for a touchdown. You're not going to beat a good team with those circumstances.

Q. More specifically what are the problems in the red zone that's connecting there to the last three weeks?

MACK BROWN: If I could answer that tonight I'd be making more money than I am coaching. We'll have to go back and look at it tonight and see what it is. It's been a consistent problem the last three weeks, and it wasn't the first 10, so I don't have any idea.

They've got a really good defense. I know that. And they were hard to block and they brought a lot of pressure, but not many people scored many points against them.

Q. Mack, did expectations get unfairly high on this team before the last three games?

MACK BROWN: I don't have any idea what they were. We want to win every game. As I've said, this team has been in the championship game twice ever since 2012, so that's a really, really good accomplishment.

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.

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.

Q. Mack, was Clemson playing both quarterbacks and Klubnik pretty much the entire rest of the game after those first two drives? Was that something that you were looking for coming into this game or did that catch you off guard?

MACK BROWN: No, Cade had played very little all year and when he went in at Notre Dame I think he threw an interception, so we totally thought we would see DJ because they hadn't changed all year.

We stopped them the first two, three times. DJ was struggling. That is exactly what we thought would happen and we were hoping would happen, because he's played good at times.

But he didn't play well last week and he was really struggling. They weren't trying to run the ball. We thought they'd try to line up and run it down our throat like Notre Dame did, and then Cade came in and hit 20 out of 24 and 10 out of 11 the first half and really played great.

Q. Mack, it's kind of piggy-backing off that, it's been the backup quarterbacks for Georgia Tech and NC State. How difficult is it and how much changes from -- you guys prepare for one thing and you have to kind of change in the middle of a game? How does that change how you --

MACK BROWN: Well, it's very difficult, and we've got to do a better job of it. The other thing is we've got a sophomore and two freshmen starting in the secondary, and you don't want to blitz, because if you do, you leave them out there by themselves.

That's what we had to do the second half and gave up some big plays.

Q. What was your message to your team on the sidelines following the pick six?

MACK BROWN: Pick it up. Go back to work. This is really difficult. It's a hard thing when you're going in to score and cut the score to 24-17, and all of a sudden it's 31-10 when you're 3rd and goal from the 4.

But that's part of life. When things happen bad you've got to pick it up and go back, and I didn't think we did very well there. I thought we need to mature. I thought we had our head down, which most people do, and then I didn't think we played as well in that stretch and then they came back and kept trying, but we didn't have the same confidence.

Q. What lessons do you think Drake Maye can take from this game tonight?

MACK BROWN: Drake is the reason we're in the game. He's playing the best defense we've played all year by far. It's one of the best defenses in the country, and we'll all grow from playing a great team. When you play a team that's been in the playoffs every year for about six out of the last eight, I think, it shows you what you've got to do to get where we want to go, and we're not there yet.

We're better than everybody else because we got here, but we weren't better than they were. This was kind of like the Notre Dame game. They were physically better than we were and they whipped us.

Q. On the pick six seemed like a huge moment in the game. What did you see on that play and what did you talk to Drake about after the play?

MACK BROWN: I thought he was trying to throw it to Copenhaver, and it just got out of control and we got a little high, and then he tried so hard to tackle him and just, he couldn't. John tried to tackle him and that's just a freakish play that changes games, just like just Omarion's fumble. We are right in the game, we're moving it, and we fumble it at the 24-yard line.

I mean -- and we're not built yet to walk in there and shut it down like we'd hope we will be at some point. But that's what I saw.

I knew we hadn't done well in the red zone, he was trying to make a play, and I think it just got out of his hands and slipped out of his hands and went over his head.

Q. You've addressed the fumble, the blocked field goal, the problems in the red zone. Are those the biggest takeaways, the biggest lessons to try to apply for next season for you and your staff and the players that are going to be coming back, just those big moments in games, those little moments in games? Where does the evaluation do you think begin?

MACK BROWN: Yeah, well, it begins after every game, so we've got to get better for the bowl game, and we'll play a top-15 team somewhere. They'll be really, really good.

Secondly, we reevaluate after every year, and red zone touchdowns were one of the major things last year. We wanted to limit tackles for loss, wanted to limit sacks, wanted to do a better job on 4th downs, which we've done, and we wanted to do a better job in the red zone with touchdowns, which we did until three weeks ago.

And we've been playing really good defenses. When you play great defenses you're not going to do as well. So we've got to do better against great defenses, and really Georgia Tech had a really good defense for our league; NC State was one of the best defenses in our league; Clemson is by far the best. Clemson rolls in two deep that's as good as anybody else's ones.

Q. You might have addressed it earlier, missed some of your earlier comments, but the way you were able to get the start going with the two stops on defense and then the opening drive, what did you think changed for you guys or what did Clemson adjust do you think? Did they just decide to bring more pressure?

MACK BROWN: They did, but they brought pressure the whole game. I think momentum changed when they brought Cade in, and he had an easy score, and the fumble really hurt us because it led to a quick score. That changed momentum in the game.

Then we got down there again and had the blocked field goal, which we haven't had all year, and they brought two off the outside, and the guy made a great play. Then we get down there again and have to kick a field goal.

We just kept having negative things happen throughout the game, and I thought we lost some confidence.

Q. You mentioned the bowl game; what are you going to say to the guys to pick them up after this, which could be a demoralizing loss? What are you going to say to reset, refocus for the bowl game which is going to be against a good team?

MACK BROWN: You know, every loss is demoralizing because you want to win so bad. You want expectations. Say people get mad when you lose. Now that's good, because they didn't care when we got here. There wasn't anybody in the stands and nobody cared and we won five games and lost 18 in two years. I'm really glad people are mad. That's a positive.

Secondly, I told the guys we've got to get better. You've got to learn from it. You've got hard things that happen in life and you've got to take negatives and turn them into positives. We knew this wasn't going to be easy. If we'd have asked everybody in here nobody in here would have picked us. We had our chances to play better. We had our chance to be in the game in the fourth quarter, and that's what we needed to do.

In the third quarter, 1st and goal from the 10, we had a chance to cut it to 24-17. We got to a point where we had our chances. We just didn't cash in on them, and that's what we've got to do better.

Were there a lot of great things tonight? Yeah. Were we awful? No. Should we have gotten beat this bad? No. We allowed things to happen that let the score get out of what it should have been.