Bill Belichick won his first game as UNC’s head coach when the Tar Heels beat UNC-Charlotte 20-3 on a rainy night at Jerry Richardson Stadium. It certainly wasn’t an impressive win, but Tar Heels fans can at least breathe a sigh of relief that they didn’t lose to a team that has exactly one win against a power four conference team. Let’s see what we learned in the Heels win.
The offense remains a work in progress
Scoring twenty points against a team of UNC-Charlotte’s caliber is, frankly, not enough. Once again, the Heels came out of the gate
on fire, using three Gio Lopez passes to quickly take a 7-0 lead. UNC came out throwing on first downs and generally seemed to make an effort to be more aggressive in their play calling. But just like the TCU game, the offense began to struggle after that opening drive. Lopez did mix in some scrambles that helped secure some first downs, but overall UNC doesn’t seem to have an identity on offense. One drive they would look like they wanted to be a power running team, and the next they would throw three straight passes.
Some of this is probably due to the fact that none of the skill players on the offensive side of the ball seems to have grabbed the job of unquestioned starter. When Belichick released a “depth chart” before the TCU game that was completely blank, I assumed it was just simply a case of him keeping his cards close to the vest like he always does. After the UNC-Charlotte game, I’m more convinced that starting jobs, playing time, and player roles are still very much up in the air. Freshman running back Demon June got the most carries in the game (nine) but Caleb Hood, Davian Gause, Charleston French, and Benjamin Hall all got touches in the game. Wide receiver Chris Culliver seemed headed for a big night after catching three passes for 74 yards and a TD but left late in the first half with a shoulder injury. Hopefully some of the players separate themselves over the next couple weeks before the Heels get into conference play.
UNC-Charlotte helped the Heels out a lot
Multiple major 49ers miscues made this game a lot easier for UNC to win. UNC-Charlotte missed a short field goal that would have cut the Heels lead to four in the first half, committed a big penalty that ultimately allowed the Heels to score a touchdown right before the half and lost roughly 30 yards of field position on offense just from mishandled snaps. They also had a massive drop on fourth down when Conner Harrell threw a perfect across-the-body pass to his receiver in the end zone only to watch it bounce off his hands.
Credit where it’s due: the Heels took advantage of the miscues to secure the win. UNC marched down the field after the missed field goal to go up 17-3. UNC-Charlotte seemed to deflate after the score and never seemed to be able to mount a serious threat to close the gap despite UNC’s own struggles on offense.
The defense was a mix of good and bad
It feels a little like I’m being nitpicky by criticizing a defense that held their opponent to three points. It’s actually the fewest points the Heels have allowed to a FBS opponent since 2001. The Heels only allowed a total of 271 yards, and a chunk of those came on the last two drives when the game was already mostly in hand. The Heels also picked off UNC-Charlotte backup quarterback Grayson Loftis twice and at times defended short passes and dump offs better than they did against TCU.
The bad?
Well, this tweet for starters:
The Heels would register a sack midway through the third quarter to break the drought but would fail to bring down the QB again despite UNC-Charlotte having to throw most of the second half in an effort to catch up. The defensive line was a huge question mark coming into this season after all the departures from this unit during the offseason, and through two games it looks like it may end up being a liability in games against average or better teams. And, as previously mentioned, UNC-Charlotte helped the Heels out quite a bit on the defensive side of the ball.
At the end of the day, the defense held its own and deserve credit for helping the Heels get the win, but there is definitely a lot of work to do, starting with next weekend’s game against Richmond.
