North Carolina could not keep their win streak going last week, as they fell to Wake Forest. That leaves two games left on the season, with UNC needing to win both to eke out a bowl game appearance. However, the two games are against the Tar Heels’ two biggest rivals who would both love nothing more than to add in some pain. That run starts this weekend against Duke in the battle for the Victory Bell.
Duke comes into this week’s matchup at 5-5. They still tangentially had a shot at spoiling some team’s
hopes and making the ACC Championship Game, but their defeat to Virginia last week has probably ended those chances. Add in a loss to UConn the previous week, and the Blue Devils themselves need one win to get to six on the season.
Despite Manny Diaz’s previous status as a defensive coordinator at several stops, this particular Duke team has been led by their offense. In particular, their passing game led by Darian Mensah has been very good. They’ve topped 300 yards passing in half of their games on the year, and Mensah has a 25-4 touchdown to interception ratio.
On the other side of things, UNC’s defense against the pass has been decent of late. Back on October 4th, Clemson burned them for 399 yards, but since then, they’ve held opposing offenses to just 185.6 air yards per game and less than six yards per attempt. Now yes, you do have to adjust that somewhat considering that one of the games was against a Syracuse team starting a lacrosse recruit at quarterback. Even then, it was really only against Stanford that an opposing offense managed to put up a big chunk of yards through the air.
Not that this should particularly come as a surprise, but Duke has had vastly different results in the air in wins compared to losses. In wins, Mensah and the Blue Devils have a completion rate over 70%, and 2.8 touchdowns per game, compared to zero interceptions. That completion rate drops to 63.5% in losses, and each of the four INTs they have on the season have in losing efforts.
One aspect that has allowed Duke to generally play so mistake free through the air is that they haven’t allowed a ton of sacks. Even in the five losses, they’ve given up just 10 sacks. One area of play that has been decent for Carolina has been getting pressure on quarterbacks. If the Tar Heels can figure out a way to get pressure on Mensah, maybe they can force mistakes or just a little less accuracy. That may, in turn, blunt Duke’s offense a bit and allow UNC’s offense to play more even. I can’t say I’m exactly counting on that to happen, but it is a theoretical path forward in this game.
Carolina’s entire 2025 season has been a theoretical of “what if we can get things to go right,” but more often than not, they haven’t. We’ll see what happens, especially against a team that would probably love to rub our noses in it.
