The last time UNC Football played on a Friday night, it was the first time all season that they put up a fight against a Power Four opponent — the first sign we’d seen all season of a semblance of progress. Two weeks later, they’ll be looking to take that next step and find an actual win against a Syracuse team that has had nearly the opposite season trajectory.
The Orange, after a loss to Tennessee and an overtime victory against old Big East rival UConn, were starting to look pretty dangerous in mid-late
September. They took Colgate to the woodshed and then beat Clemson by multiple scores — but in doing so, lost quarterback Steve Angeli to an Achilles tear. Since then, the Orange have lost four straight and none of them have been that close. Any ambitions they may have rightfully had at halftime of the Clemson game of challenging for the top of the ACC are distant memories, and, much like the Heels, Fran Brown and Syracuse find themselves playing for little more than pride as November begins.
The dropoff at quarterback has been steep since Angeli’s injury. Angeli was having an excellent first season as a starter after transferring from Notre Dame, completing 63% of his passes for 1,316 yards, 10 touchdowns, and 2 picks through 3.5 games. That yardage was 2nd in the country after that weekend’s games had been completed, even though plenty of his peers had an extra half of playing time. By contrast, backup Rickie Collins has completed 55% of his passes for 957 yards, six touchdowns, and eight interceptions on the same number of attempts. His struggles are amplified a little bit because this offense puts so much responsibility on its quarterback; at the time of his injury, Angeli was 3rd in the country in passing attempts. Still, Collins just hasn’t been able to let this offense be competitive. They never scored less than 26 points in the four games Angeli played, and haven’t crossed the 20-point mark since with most of their meager scoring coming well after the games have been decided. There’s a chance that Fran Brown turns elsewhere this week at quarterback, and if so, the likely next man up is freshman Luke Carney. Carney was a 4-time state champion in Texas, which is no small deal, but there’s not a lot to indicate what he might look like as a college signal-caller.
In the run game, the primary name to know is Yasin Willis. He hasn’t had much room to get going, because Cuse’s offensive line had already been pretty subpar as a run blocking unit and has been even more crowded with defenses unafraid of Collins being able to beat them downfield. You see flashes of talent, though, as he broke impressive long runs against Duke and Georgia Tech that gave his team basically their only relevant scoring opportunities in either game. With a quarterback taking some pressure off him like in Syracuse’s game against Tennessee, he’s proven to be a decent back — in that Tennessee game, he took 23 carries for 92 yards and three scores. Collins can also scoot a little, with a healthy 5.9 yards-per-carry average on 36 non-sack attempts.
Defensively, the Orange have had a good game or two, and to be fair, have had a hard go of it with the offense being as inept as it has been. Still, the numbers are the numbers. Opposing quarterbacks have completed 65% of their passes for 274 yards per game, which is eighth-worst in the country. They’ve forced seven takeaways through their eight games, including five interceptions. Three of those come courtesy of Davien Kerr, who’s been a pretty boom-or-bust corner — receivers can get open on him, but he’ll gladly punish bad quarterback play. They don’t fare much better on the ground. While teams haven’t run on them as much as they’ve passed because of how much success they’ve allowed through the air, their mark of 4.8 yards per carry against is still bottom-30 in the country and the worst in the ACC. Brown has a reputation as a good defensive coach, and part of this certainly is the defense getting worn down because they’re forced to play, and play from behind, so often.
A real bright spot for Syracuse defensively has been defensive tackle Kevin Jobity, Jr. He’s a smidge undersized for the position, but he’s strong and athletic and has really broken out this year, racking up five sacks through the Orange’s eight games. Besides him, look out for David Omopariola and Gary Bryant at linebacker, who are hard hitters who create a fair number of tackles for loss — they do play a little too opportunistically at times, leading to those high per-carry averages and success rates, but they don’t do too badly at putting offenses behind the sticks.
Since Angeli’s injury, the Orange’s offense has looked just about as hapless as UNC’s. This has all the makings of a really ugly game, fairly similar to the last couple that Carolina has played. I wouldn’t be at all surprised to see this game come down to one big play: a defensive score, one key stop, just something a little unexpected that the other team can’t quite match.
