CHAPEL HILL — As North Carolina turned the corner into game week for the Orange Bowl, coach Mack Brown sounded as if he’s still coming to terms with the decisions of the four Tar Heels stars who have opted not to participate and declared for the NFL Draft.
Particularly the timing associated with the exit made by running back Javonte Williams, the latest such departure during the weekend.
“You don’t get your last year in college back,” Brown said Monday. “You don’t get your last game in college back, and I know at 40 years old these guys (on the team) are going to be proud of that Orange Bowl ring sitting on their desk. That’s part of this process, and that’s what we have to look at.
“But I think we all have to stop a minute and think. We all have critical decisions to make in our life. None of them are easy if we have options, and these four young guys have put themselves in a position to have options, and I think that’s a good thing.”
Williams and backfield partner Michael Carter, along with receiver Dyami Brown and linebacker Chazz Surratt, have chosen to forgo playing for 14th-ranked North Carolina (8-3) against No. 5 Texas A&M (8-1) in the bowl game Saturday night, and instead have turned their focus toward their awaiting NFL careers.
Mack Brown took a moment during Monday’s session with reporters “to personally thank the four guys” who are headed to the pros and praise their collective character, while saying the Tar Heels couldn’t have landed the program’s first-ever Orange Bowl berth and first appearance in a major bowl in 70 years without their significant contributions.
Brown, though, also characterized Williams’ decision as something of a surprise that caught him and his assistants off guard. He said he arrived at Kenan Football Center, the team’s base of operations, for a staff meeting on the day after Christmas, and found the powerful running back waiting there to deliver the news.
Carter, Dyami Brown and Surratt revealed their choices to opt out for the NFL five days prior to Williams announcing his move. Mack Brown said Williams had been practicing with the team and the Tar Heels had been preparing to feature him extensively in the bowl game.
“He would’ve gotten more touches, and we thought he was excited about that,” Mack Brown said, adding that offensive coordinator Phil Longo and North Carolina’s coaches used off days from practice Sunday and Monday as a means of “trying to figure out what we’re going to do differently since Javonte’s not playing.”
British Brooks, Josh Henderson and Elijah Green are the running backs North Carolina will have available for the bowl game, Mack Brown said, with D.J. Jones out due to a foot injury. They are reserves who have been plugged in sparingly on offense, as Carter and Williams have shouldered nearly all of the rushing workload. Green’s 12 carries on the season, while dwarfed by Williams’ 157 carries and Carter’s 156 carries, mark the most attempts among the backs remaining for the Tar Heels.
Across the course of last week, North Carolina lost a pair of 1,000-yard rushers and 33 total touchdowns this season in the form of Carter and Williams, a 1,000-yard receiver two times over in Dyami Brown, and a first-team All-Atlantic Coast Conference linebacker in Surratt, who led the team in tackles last season and again this season.
“Really and truly we should be celebrating the success that those four guys had,” Mack Brown said, “because we wouldn’t be in the Orange Bowl without them. They have helped us turn this thing around very, very quickly. Are we built to replace them immediately? Ehh, we’re not in as good a shape right now as we will be a year from now.
“But we’ve also learned from this, because this seems to be the norm now. So we’re going to have people leaving every year. And since that’s the case, we can’t be surprised or we can’t be disappointed, we just have to be thankful and step up and move forward.”
Mack Brown said the Tar Heels had yet to receive the NFL evaluation on Williams and Dyami Brown that their program compiles from general managers and coaches in the league, a report with feedback and information for junior standouts who could leave college early and jump to the pro ranks.
North Carolina had 34 players taken in the NFL Draft from 1988-97, the 10 seasons that comprised Mack Brown’s first coaching stop in Chapel Hill. He said among those selections — and even widening the group to 1998 and 1999 Tar Heels draftees he coached such as Greg Ellis, Vonnie Holliday, Brian Simmons, Ebenezer Ekuban and Dré Bly — only running back Natrone Means, a second-round pick by the San Diego Chargers in 1993, bypassed his senior season of college to enter the NFL early.
“The same thing happened at Texas,” Brown said, referring to his stay with the Longhorns from 1998-2013. “Until (quarterback) Vince Young, we really didn’t have many go out early, and then we had a couple after that.”
Texas A&M, under coach Jimbo Fisher, fell one spot short of reaching the College Football Playoff this season. Brown said perhaps the four-team chase for the national championship should be expanded. He said that might affect opt-out moves.
“It’s been such a strange year anyway, but I do think that the decision-makers need to look at expanding the playoff,” he said, “because when you look at guys that are opting out, nobody’s opted out of the playoffs.
“So obviously in decision-makers’ minds — the players, the families, the third parties, whoever’s involved — the playoff is more important now than bowl games. So we’ve got to look at that. Should we go to six? Should we go to eight?”
ORANGE BOWL
Who: No. 14 North Carolina (8-3) vs. No. 5 Texas A&M (8-1)
When: 8 p.m. Saturday (ESPN)
Where: Hard Rock Stadium, Miami Gardens, Fla.
Series: First meeting
Extra points: North Carolina is making its Orange Bowl debut, while Texas A&M is playing in the game for the second time and making its first appearance since 1944. … North Carolina’s Mack Brown and Texas A&M’s Jimbo Fisher are two of the six active college football coaches who have won national championships. … The Tar Heels are 4-2 in bowl games under Brown, with victories in the 1993 Beach Bowl, the 1995 Carquest Bowl, the 1997 Gator Bowl and the 2019 Military Bowl.
This article originally appeared on Times-News: Mack Brown coming to terms with NFL exits as UNC regroups for Orange Bowl
