If Mack Brown thought JMU debacle was bad, UNC’s meltdown against Duke is somehow worse

That famous Mark Twain line, the one about reports of his death being greatly exaggerated, was itself an exaggeration. Twain never actually put it like that, not exactly. It was, in fact, a little more understated and direct: “The report of my death was an exaggeration.”

For long stretches Saturday — for most of UNC’s rivalry game against Duke, in fact — it looked like Mack Brown might be able to use that line himself. After a week in which he took a beating from North Carolina fans and critics alike, a week in which he toiled in the aftermath of one of the worst defeats of his career, it looked like Brown might have the last laugh.

At least for a little while, anyway.

It looked like he might be able to say — to quote another notable American wordsmith — “Not so fast, my friend.”

For 2 1/2 quarters at Wallace Wade Stadium, it looked like he might be able to revel in the high of another victory against the Blue Devils; like he might even be able to gloat a little, after leading the Tar Heels out of the depths and then out of Durham, victorious.

Still got it, Brown could have said, even if it strained believability. Not bad for a 73-year-old man. How ‘bout that?

And then came the final 20 minutes of the game at Wallace Wade, and a series of events that only added to UNC’s misery, and the perception that the Tar Heels are adrift. Then came a dreadful meltdown and the squandering of a three-touchdown lead, and a 21-20 defeat that will undoubtedly amplify the chorus of discontent that suddenly surrounds Brown, the oldest major-college football head coach in the country.

What would Brown say to those who might be losing faith? He didn’t hesitate when asked Saturday night.

“I’d say go to the Pittsburgh game next week and really support these kids,” he said. “They’re great kids that work their rear ends off to do the best that they can do.

“Everybody in the country that loses a football game has noise.”

True enough. But nobody in the country has lost games the past two weeks the way UNC has lost: overmatched one week by a school that only recently began playing FBS football, and then while surrendering a 20-point third-quarter lead against a rival. Saturday was only the encore to what came before.

Last week, Brown suffered one of the most — if not the most — humiliating defeats of his career, UNC’s 70-50 debacle against James Madison. The 70 points allowed (53 in the first half), the turnovers, the general dysfunction of it all left Brown so flustered that when it ended he asked his already demoralized players whether he should just go ahead and retire.

Rumors swirled that Brown had resigned. At least one report emerged that suggested he had.

Two days later, Brown blamed his emotional meltdown on the circumstances of the moment. He’d been “very disappointed,” he said, and in a “dark place.” He’d been angry with himself at almost everything about that disaster of a loss, and said: “I have a really bad temper.”

“What I said,” Brown said Monday of his postgame comments after the James Madison defeat, “is if you all don’t feel like I’m the leader you need, then I’ll do something else.”

As Brown told it, his players basically told him to stop talking crazy. A nice gesture, but ultimately empty without some sort of reassurance that they’d actually perform for him —the kind of reassurance, it turned out, the Tar Heels provided through the first 2 1/2 quarters against Duke on Saturday. And, indeed, UNC dominated that stretch.

Its offense was plenty good enough. Its maligned defense looked A-OK.

And then, well? A nation of disillusioned Tar Heels supporters watched it. They saw.

No explanation needed.

UNC’s breakdown against JMU was all of the adjectives for “bad” and more. It was the sort of thesaurus-testing performance that stretched the limits of description. Substandard, poor, inferior, dreadful, awful, grim. Yes. All of those — and then some. No power-conference program should ever look that bad against a lower-level team with far fewer resources, let alone one that only began playing FBS football a few years ago.

Somehow, though, what happened on Saturday for UNC was worse. Not the fact that the Tar Heels merely lost, no, though a loss of any kind, in any fashion, would have been bad enough after last weekend. But it was the how of it all: That UNC surrendered a 20-point lead, for one.

That when the Tar Heels needed to be at their strongest, especially mentally, they were far from it. That the defense faded, and then folded, when times became tough. That UNC seemed to forget that it has Omarion Hampton. That it just needed to hold on for a quarter and a half and escape and that it could … not … do it.

And that the whole thing took on some familiar sense of inevitability.

A sense of:

Of course UNC is letting Duke back in this.

And then:

Of course the Tar Heels, who at one point faced a first-and-35 after two penalties, are doing all they can to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory.

Of course.

Brown, to his credit, at least kept his cool this time. Five days after acknowledging that he’d gone to such a “dark place” last weekend, and that losing makes him “physically sick,” he kept his composure Saturday night. He said all the right things during his postgame press conference, and so did his players, who spoke publicly for the first time since before the defeat against James Madison.

“You lose two in a row, obviously there’s going to be some heads turning,” said Jacolby Criswell, the Tar Heels’ quarterback. “But at the end of the day, like I said, I have 100% belief in the coaches and the players, and we’re going to get this done.”

Criswell had some nice moments Saturday. So did Hampton, who eclipsed 100 yards rushing. So did a defense, especially for most of three quarters, that allowed JMU to score at will last week. But UNC was ultimately left with little to show for it, after another defeat that will undoubtedly intensify the criticism surrounding Brown.

That UNC created a late chance of its own (kind of, until Duke’s game-sealing interception) is admirable, but irrelevant. The Tar Heels never should have been in that position. Given the events of the first two quarters and 10 minutes or so, they should’ve walked out of Wallace Wade with, at worst, a too-close-for-comfort victory.

Instead, this was a worst-case scenario: A total meltdown. A collapse.

A turning point kind of defeat, and for the second consecutive week. In 2016, a Larry Fedora-led UNC team lost in similar fashion against Duke, squandering a comfortable lead only to lose a close game. His program never really seemed to recover. It’s fair to wonder, now, about UNC’s resiliency after this coaching regime.

At halftime, the Tar Heels led by 20 points and, indeed, those reports of Brown’s demise really did seem greatly exaggerated. Not so much by the end, though. By the end, a haggard and weary Brown walked off the field while Duke students rushed it, and while Duke players sprinted to the Victory Bell.

The sound of it ringing could still be heard well after the field began to clear, and well after Brown had made the long walk to the visiting locker room. He said days earlier that one lesson he carried from the defeat against JMU is that he needed to control his emotions better, and it looked like he did.

Another lesson: If he thought last week was bad, Saturday offered another reminder that things can always get worse.