Prior to last night’s game, I said over and over again that I didn’t know what to expect. There was just as high of a chance that UNC would be bad as there was that they would be good, and there’s a lot of factors in play there. Unfortunately for all of us we got the bad result, and I’ll be honest: it sucks. It sucks a lot. We’ll get to any silver lining that there is to be found about all of this, but for now it just seems like Carolina football is stuck in the most frustrating limbo that has ever
existed. Things were so bad last night that the announcers sounded bored near the beginning of the fourth quarter. To say this team wasn’t ready for primetime is an understatement, but we all know why they felt the need to do that.
To not waste anymore time, let’s discuss a few takeaways from last night’s game.
I don’t have an assessment of Gio Lopez thanks to Freddie Kitchens
Let’s get this out of the way now: it’s too early to have strong feelings about an offensive coordinator. It’s not fair to him, it’s not fair to the offense, and in a way it’s not fair to Bill Belichick. However, it’s really hard to look past the fact that Freddie Kitchens called an awful game yesterday. If I’m to be charitable about it, he probably would’ve looked better as a play caller if he didn’t have injuries on the offensive line, but even with that said I feel like he did the unit a disservice. More specifically, I feel like Gio Lopez was held back in this one, and I wasn’t fully able to figure out why.
Sure, Lopez threw a couple of stinkers last night, but he only got to throw the ball 10 times all night. Max Johnson matched that number rather quickly after Lopez suffered a back injury, but by that point the game was basically done. I think Lopez had some good and bad plays, but I really couldn’t learn much about him because Kitchens was too afraid to let him throw the ball. The only thing I can say for sure is that he had a problem getting the ball out as fast as I would like, but also Johnson had the luxury of going against soft coverage. I hope Lopez’s injury isn’t serious, and I hope Kitchens takes the handcuffs off of him if he does come back soon. This is my attempt at being nice about what I’ve seen from the former interim head coach.
TCU took advantage of matchups beautifully
On the defensive side of the ball, TCU quickly figured out who they could pick on in order to run up the score. Jordan Dwyer had a field day making Marcus Allen and Khalil Conley look silly, which led to him finishing his night with 9 catches for 136 yards and a touchdown. Meanwhile, TCU quarterback Josh Hoover made it a point to stay clear of Thaddeus Dixon, who didn’t let a lot of damage get done against him all night.
The Horned Frogs’ running backs also carved up the Heels’ defense relatively easily, and a lot of that damage was done by Kevorian Barnes. He finished his night with 11 runs for 113 yards and a touchdown. It felt like UNC’s front seven held their own just fine in the first defensive drive of the game, but everything fell apart after that. Barnes was a beast every time that he touched the ball, and at one point he found wide open spaces for a long touchdown. UNC wasn’t good last night, but TCU proved that they are indeed a good team. They stuck to their game plan, and it ultimately resulted in one of the bigger beatings that we’ve seen the Heels take.
Keeping things in perspective
While last night’s game was as frustrating and embarrassing as it possibly could be, there are a few things to keep in mind. First, no matter who Bill Belichick is and what he has accomplished, there was always going to be a learning curve for him. Football is football, sure, but the college game is just different, and he’ll ultimately go back to the drawing board to learn from this one and hopefully make some positive adjustments. The other tough thing is that this team has a LOT of new pieces, and getting them all to play high-caliber football in the first game of the season was probably asking too much. Finally, because both of these two things are true, I wouldn’t be shocked if there’s some changes to the depth chart as we move through the season.
I also can’t emphasize this enough: TCU isn’t as brand new of a team as UNC is. They had nine wins last season, and while I’m sure they had some transfer portal turnover, it wasn’t nearly as dramatic of a situation as the Heels had. While I know the final score looks awful, there’s no shame losing to a team of this caliber, especially in Week 1. It is what it is, but that obviously doesn’t mean that the loss wasn’t super frustrating.
The nice thing for UNC is that they have games against Charlotte and Richmond next, so ideally they will be able to get their feet under them before they have to go up against Power 4 competition again. I hope that this team will be fine long-term, but it really depends on how they develop as the season progresses. Shake this one off, try to put away the 49ers this Saturday, and we’ll see how things go from there.
