North Carolina head coach Mack Brown made it quite clear what he thinks of the Notre Dame football program during his press conference this week.
“They’re kind of the standard that we’d like to be,” Brown said.
Then he rattled off a couple key statistics to prove why. Notre Dame has 37 straight wins against unranked opponents. The Fighting Irish have won 27 times in its last 28 games played at Notre Dame Stadium.
Both of those figures will be a factor when North Carolina (4-3) takes on No. 11 Notre Dame (6-1) in South Bend this Saturday at 7:30 p.m. ET (NBC).
Brown is in awe of the way Notre Dame has been able to string together double-digit win seasons. If anyone can respect what it takes to do that, it is Brown. He rattled off nine straight campaigns with 10 or more wins at Texas from 2001-09.
“They just reload,” Brown said. “It’s still a really good looking team with a lot of seniors and grad transfers on it.”
Notre Dame head coach Brian Kelly acknowledged his friendship with Brown during his own press conference Monday. Brown allowed Kelly to attend practices at Texas when Brown was in the prime of his coaching career and Kelly was a new head coach at Division II Grand Valley State.
All these years later, Brown is impressed by what Kelly has done at one of the premier programs in college football. Brown’s tenure at Texas lasted 16 years. Kelly is in his 12th season at Notre Dame.
Brown commended Kelly’s longevity by saying: “It’s hard to stay places a long time. I know that for sure.”
He added: “[Kelly] is a tremendous coach. He’s not a guy that does it negative in recruiting. They go by the rules. They’ve got really bright kids. They’re very well coached.”
Brown got a taste of Notre Dame's recent run of excellence last year when the Irish beat the Tar Heels 31-17 in Chapel Hill. The coach said it was one of two games during the 2020 season in which his team was clearly overwhelmed, the other being against Texas A&M.
“Offensively against Notre Dame, we did not play well in the second half at all,” Brown said. “And that was with one of the best offenses I’ve ever been around. They absolutely, physically just beat us. It is what it is.
“As our kids say, ‘It’s fact.’ And that was the only game last year where I thought we had no chance to win the game in the second half.”
The Tar Heels might find themselves in similar situations more frequently than Brown would like over the next month. Notre Dame is the first of three currently ranked opponents North Carolina will face in the next three weeks. The Tar Heels are at home against undefeated and No. 13 Wake Forest Nov. 6, and are on the road at one-loss and No. 17 Pitt Nov. 11.
It is cliché for a coach to say he is taking it one week at a time and only focusing on what the outcome of the next game will mean for his team. During North Carolina’s bye week, Brown admitted he examined the full scope of the final five weeks of the season and shared the outlook with his players.
“You could still win the last five, or you could lose four of those five pretty easily,” Brown admitted. “We’ll be a heavy favorite over Wofford, but the other four we will be an underdog.
“You could walk out of here, win nine games and make people who are disappointed in you really happy and come out of this thing really, really well. Or you could lose them all. That’s who you are.”
The make-or-break portion of North Carolina’s schedule starts with a game under the lights at Notre Dame Stadium against an opponent Brown clearly has the utmost respect for. He is excited to get it going.
“We’ve got a really tough schedule and hard places to play, and it’s time for us to grow up,” Brown said.
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