Mack Brown will never be mistaken for a great football coach, but he has always been a great recruiter, and that helped him build big breakthrough years at UNC his first time around and then later at Texas.
It seemed plausible if not exactly guaranteed that one of those breakthroughs might happen in Chapel Hill this time around, if only because Brown has had two of the best quarterbacks (the best two?) in program history to work with. This year in particular seemed like the time for it, as the blue chip prospects Brown recruited so easily early on are now upperclassmen, and Drake Maye was going to build off his first year as a starter.