UNC Football: It's time for the Mack Brown marriage to end through resignation or retirement

In 2018, as the second horrible season in a row under Larry Fedora began to spiral into the pit, I made a angry message Joking that the football team is going to kill me. I had just found out that I had cancer and that I would be receiving chemo treatments every other weekend, including having to take home a small pump that would slowly drip the drugs into my system over the course of 30 hours. I thought at some point I would get so frustrated during a chemo weekend that I would grab the machine and throw it against the wall. This was after the 47-10 disaster in Miami, and while I never really had to explain why I had created a biohazard in my Boston apartment, it was clear early in the season that it was time for a change at the top of the top. Carolina Football.

It's also a way of saying that things have been worse.

Still, that loss followed the lone bright spot in the season win over Pitt after an embarrassing 0-2 start against Cal and ECU. We as a fanbase had hope for a wonderful moment. Then the team showed its true colors again and although Fedora was allowed to finish the rest of the season, we all knew what that loss meant.

Sound familiar?

We've reached that point with this version of the Tar Heels. Mack hit the desperation button after last week's embarrassing loss to James Madison, and for a while it looked like it had worked. There was a brief glimmer of hope that last weekend's defense was just an anomaly and not the norm. It held for part of the second half as the Tar Heels extended their lead to 20-0, then everything fell apart.

That's the problem with this version of Mack Brown, even though it all fell apart. 2021 started promisingly as a third-year NFL-caliber quarterback led the team and they fell apart at the start on the road. It all fell apart in 2022 when the Tar Heels had a Heisman candidate on the dark horse and then couldn't hold a lead against Georgia Tech. It all fell apart in 2023 when the Tar Heels pulled off an inspiring victory in front of a huge home crowd against Miami, only to stifle them and win just one more meaningful game the rest of the season. Everything fell apart last weekend when a rebuilding team managed to surprise the Tar Heels and at no point did it seem like they could provide an answer. It also all fell apart on Saturday when the Tar Heels were called for a questionable holding penalty, settling for 20-0 instead of 24-0 and never recovering.

Carolina has now had three defensive coordinators and two offensive coordinators. NFL front office people have discredited both OCs in the breakup of their two professional quarterbacks, and despite three different defensive schemes, the players exhibit the same lack of discipline, the same lack of fundamentals, and the same tendency to give up big plays at worst . time. If you've changed coordinators so many times and the same problems keep happening, it's not their fault, it's yours.

I tried to share an ounce of optimism last Tuesday I spoke with Adam Gold and noted that Mack Brown seemed to have special equipment with Manny Diaz and that if the team showed they were willing to learn from last weekend, the schedule still looked favorable enough for a good season. Honestly, by the end of the conversation you can hear how doubtful I was that it would happen. I didn't expect it to happen in perhaps one of the most painful ways.

It's time for this charade to end. The cracks in the program were on full display last weekend, to the point where some people felt the need to speak up Within Carolina what was said. Brown lamenting the fact that the locker room is no longer sacred is a signal that it should be, and players happy with the team's direction would have kept that behind closed doors. Even in the worst Carolina basketball seasons, the problems didn't surface until after the year was over. Mack shut down any chance for players to talk to the media, telling them to focus on Duke, and it became an embarrassing loss. Wait, I'm sorry, another painful loss.

If Mack Brown were to announce now that this would be his final season, the team would have one more thing to fight for. It would also remove the cloud that will hang over the team for the rest of the season. It would turn this season into what it should be: a celebration of a Hall of Fame coach's final act, putting the program back on equal footing and giving fans the chance to dream of more . As it stands, there are only four home games left and they are all in danger of looking the same as they did in 2018; the stands are half full with a disgruntled crowd of fans who are quick to rain down boos on the coaches. Or it could be worse: they simply don't care and revenue plummets while the fan base turns its weary eyes to basketball.

I don't care at this point how it is done, but it must be done. Give fans a reason to cheer for the rest of the season instead of the slow drip of depression it threatens to become.