Let’s skip all the already-tired lines about how this was another close loss that came down to the UNC offense not being able to quite make it to the end zone and get to the evaluation. Spoilers: a lot
of these will look better than they have for most of the year, but probably the two most important will not.
Quarterback: D
For about one half, Gio Lopez looked… different. Not necessarily good, but like an average-to-below-average power conference quarterback rather than somebody who was contending for the worst college quarterback in the country. He was getting the ball out to avoid sacks and his arm looked looser and was pumping balls to receivers in open space. There were still a couple of bad misses and infuriating throws short of the sticks on third down, but he completed 9 of his first 10 passes and finished the first half 17/25 for 173 yards. That was an unthinkable line for him as recently as a week ago, let alone against a defense that’s played well this season.
It did not last. In the second half, handed opportunities over and over again to take a lead, he completed just 5/10 passes for 26 yards and two backbreaking interceptions: one in the red zone on a bad throw, one on a deep ball that should never have been thrown — and probably could have been called for a game-losing intentional-grounding-into-safety besides that. I’m glad to see that he isn’t throwing such a heavy, labored ball anymore, but his processing and accuracy are still debilitating. It was as clear as ever on the game-deciding play, where presnap motion told him that the defense was in zone and thus to look for the hang/sit route or somebody to come open in the mesh rather than targeting the running back with defenders in front of him. And yet, Lopez ignored the entire picture in front of him, backpedaled and rolled right for no real reason, and dumped it to his running back. It was ballgame even before a tackle made it official. A starting college quarterback should not need more reps to be able to read Mesh properly; he’s been doing that since middle school. At this point, what you’re seeing is what you get.
Running Back: B+
As a group, Carolina running backs took 26 carries for 133 yards, which is pretty good! I’m not really sure what Benjamin Hall has done to earn the majority of carries at this point in the season. He’s running reasonably well, but his success hasn’t really been notable among his peers, while when it was Demon June who was taking the lion’s share, his fellow backs were all getting stuffed. I think Hall is a decent back who gets what’s blocked for him and falls forward through contact, but whose lack of acceleration and speed leave a lot of meat on the bone, and for an offense that’s in dire need of explosive plays, that kind of chain-mover isn’t really going to do much to win you games. Hall and June both averaged about 4.5 yards a carry and Davion Gause had an explosive run that gave him 30 yards on his 3 attempts, and June was the only one of the three to actually record a missed tackle.
Receivers: B-
This game started, of course, how the last one ended, with a Tar Heel receiver (in this instance, Kobe Paysour) losing the ball just before crossing the goal line and turning a touchdown into a turnover. From that low point, the UNC pass-catchers did their jobs, making a few adjustments on semi-accurate balls and moving the chains. Jordan Shipp was his usual impressive self, with 7 catches on 7 targets for a team-high 67 yards, while Madrid Tucker was a featured part of the offense with a team-high 9 targets and 8 catches, mostly of the manufactured kind in short-intermediate areas. With none of his catches going for more than 9 yards, Tucker finished with 41 yards in his first collegiate action. Again, I don’t see a big offensive ceiling for the guys being prioritized by this offensive coaching staff, even if they are making positive-ish plays.
Of course, there’s some talk about Shanard Clower dropping a deep pass that would have essentially ended the game in regulation, but I don’t put much of that responsibility on him. It was a well-timed hit by a trailing defensive back to force the ball out, and more importantly, that ball should never have been thrown exactly because of the risk that something like that might happen — especially not to a smaller receiver in double coverage, and especially not to one who was playing his third snap of the game.
Offensive Line: A
Gio Lopez had all the time in the world on basically every dropback he took in what had to have been this unit’s cleanest pass-blocking day of the season. Again, this was against a Virginia defensive line that has been making plays this season; it’s much more impressive to have done this against these Cavaliers than what we saw last Friday. Lopez took three sacks, and they were all on him rather than on the offense letting somebody through too soon. They weren’t dominant in the run game, but they did enough to move the chains. Will O’Steen at guard was a particular bright spot in both phases.
Defensive Line: A
Virginia’s offensive line is one of the better position groups in the ACC, and they looked shockingly, utterly helpless against this UNC front. J’Mari Taylor, who’s having a fabulous season behind them, had absolutely nowhere to go, averaging just 3.3 yards per carry. Chandler Morris was sacked six times, basically as many as he’d taken all season up to this point. Melkart Abou-Jaoude was the splashy one, with 3 sacks of his own (and his first real sacks that looked like wins on pass rush rather than effort-based coverage sacks, to my eye), but two more sacks came from the defensive interior and there were pressures from all across the defensive line: five other players recorded either a sack or a quarterback hurry.
Linebackers: B+
The defensive line made the off-ball linebackers’ lives easy by destroying the line of scrimmage so regularly, but the job still had to be done, and UNC’s most consistent position group delivered. Khmori House led the team in tackles as usual with 7 total and 4 solo, Mikai Gbayor wasn’t far behind with 6 tackles, and Andrew Simpson jumped a flat route and picked off Morris in the third quarter, giving his offense a drive starting in field goal range that they wouldn’t be able to capitalize on. They’ve been a useful tandem all season, though I do want Simpson to be a stronger tackler. That’s small potatoes, though. You take a game all day where the quarterback was under constant duress and barely completed anything over the middle, and where no rush went over 10 yards.
Secondary: C+
While Marcus Allen was probably unfairly victimized by a pass interference call late in the game that erased an interception (that ultimately didn’t end up mattering much), it’s hard to defend him after his lazy tackling effort gave up Virginia’s only regulation touchdown. In general, Morris didn’t have too tough a time finding receivers when he wasn’t being harangued in the backfield. His line of 20/35 for 200 yards isn’t the most impressive, but it’s enough for an offense to be successful. Both outside cornerbacks, Allen and Jaiden Patterson, were picked on a fair bit, but safeties Gavin Gipson and Will Hardy kept the middle pretty clean. Gipson also impressed in run support, while Hardy had a bad whiffed tackle of the kind that has pretty much defined his season thus far.
Special Teams: C-
Tom Maginness got a lot of work on Saturday, and he turned in what was almost certainly his best pure punting performance as a Tar Heel. He kicked 7 punts with a gross average of 45 yards per punt, with two going over 50, and neither was a lucky bouncer. He was outkicking his coverage on a fair number of those, however, giving UVA a couple of sizeable returns that basically erased any field position wins UNC might have had — he ended up netting just 36 yards per kick. His placekicking counterpart, Rece Verhoff, was successfully iced to end the first half and shanked a 50-yarder that would have been his season high and given the Heels a halftime lead. He’d earlier drilled a 34-yarder. And Will Hardy nearly gave away a couple of punts by failing to secure fair catches. His replacement, Vari Green, had a couple of nice runbacks, but UNC is still waiting to find a really secure option back there.
Coaching: D-
I’m a little torn here, because on one hand, this staff does deserve no small amount of credit for the fact that this team, and especially this defense, gave Virginia all they could handle for 60 minutes-plus. I was unconvinced of any actual progress after the Cal game, because Cal is a very bad team. I’m a little more moved after this one, even though it sure looked like Virginia was giving the game away at least as much as UNC was playing up to them. On another hand, I remember what things felt like nearly this time last year, after a UNC team that had looked utterly broken had ripped off three straight wins, one of them against a team with a pulse. Is this competence an actual building block, or is it, like it was last year, ephemeral, built to last exactly until something falls out of place? Personally, I’ve seen too many red flags from this staff that mirror the previous one to not think it’s the latter, but pessimism is just one mode of living.
Operationally, the coaching is much more straightforwardly worthy of criticism. The management of the end of the first half was baffling — even in the NFL (well, maybe not this year), actively playing for a 50-yard field goal is a fool’s errand. In college, with a kicker who hasn’t made one from 50+ all year, it’s nigh on suicide. I could say the same about the management of the end of the game. As much as I’ve criticized Lopez for throwing a ball 40 yards downfield when he needed just 20 to win the game, the offensive staff deserves as much criticism for not making it crystal clear that such a route, even if needed for the shape of the play, was not an actual passing option. And I also can’t get behind putting the ball in this quarterback’s hands when you need 3 yards to win the game, when the bulk of this team’s offensive success this year has been on the ground. The Heels had a ton of opportunities to get something more than a moral victory out of this game, and while some of those were lost to bad execution, just as many were fumbled by the kind of coaching mistakes that Bill Belichick was once famous for avoiding.
