Let’s be honest here — last Monday’s loss against TCU couldn’t have gone much worse. Outside of the opening drive, the offense couldn’t do anything and the defense withered under the Horned Frogs offense. It was so bad that the line against Charlotte dropped by six to seven points depending on where you looked, and this was a 49ers squad that once again finds themselves starting over with a new coach as they try to make their way in the American Conference.
Add that the game was on the road in a stadium
that will easily be the smallest they play in over the course of this season — Wake’s home stadium holds over 31,000 and Charlotte was celebrating getting close to 20,000 — plus having two days less to prepare, and the recipe was there for failure. Instead, the Tar Heels stood up and got Bill Belichick his first college win. It at least establishes that the team hasn’t given up on the season. So with that, let’s see who are the winners, losers, and honorable mentions of the 20-3 win over the 49ers.
Winners
Gio Lopez – The stats aren’t that gaudy. He only went 17-25 for 155 yards, and also rushed nine times for 44 yards to be the team’s second leading rusher on the day, but the most important stat for Gio was zero. As in zero turnovers. His decision making was crisp, and while offensive coordinator Freddie Kitchens seemed to fall in love with the screen pass, there was some RPO mixed in. Lopez also had the highlight of the game with a 51 yard bomb to Chris Culliver at the beginning of the game to put the Tar Heels on top early. After his injury Monday night, it left many fans wondering if Max Johnson was going to take over, but Saturday night showed that Lopez’s weaknesses may have had more to do with who was in his ear rather than his lack of talent.
UNC Defensive Front – What was expected to be the strength of this UNC team showed up on Saturday night. While they only were able to get one sack on former UNC quarterback Conner Harrell, they forced him into having to make quick decisions and take nibbles here and there. His longest pass of the night was only 19 yards, and the 49ers were able to rush for just 21 yards total. Their pressure emphasized a “bend-don’t-break” defensive approach that was tiring to watch as Charlotte was able to move the ball down the field, but also came in handy as the field narrowed and the front was able to take more chances. It showed in the final score, as Charlotte was only able to get one field goal, though they arguably should have had another with a miss late in the second quarter.
Demon June – The other strength of the Tar Heels was expected to be the running back room, and it once again showed on Saturday. Carolina was able to net 148 yards on the ground, but the biggest surprise was June. The first-year player from Jacksonville had a bully-ball head of steam approach that the game called for. That type of run game might end up being Carolina’s best weapon as the offensive line for the Tar Heels continues to struggle, and you don’t know if you’re going to be able to consistently get holes that let players like Caleb Hood and Davion Gause going. June led all rushers with 52 yards including a 19 yard gain, had a tidy 5.8 yard average, and clearly earned himself some more reps next week against Richmond.
Losers
UNC Secondary – One of the reasons that the Tar Heels only had one sack on Harrell is that Charlotte was successful in getting a lot of people open on quick passes. Their weakness was perhaps exposed the most when the 49ers swapped out quarterbacks and put in Grayson Loftis, and while the game was no where near out of reach, the relaxed pressure up front allowed Loftis to get huge chunks of yardage. It’s clear that Charlotte studied the tape of the TCU game and realized how this defensive backfield can be attacked. The lack of safety help was especially alarming, and if the Tar Heels are going to hope to have a winning season it’s something that’ll need to be fixed soon.
Freddie Kitchens – During the game, the announcers for ESPN+ shared what was supposed to be a funny anecdote about how Kitchens was never really interviewed for Offensive Coordinator. He just kept showing up for work and eventually Bill Belichick gave him the job. Hilarious, right? Except it speaks to just how little work was done at the most important coaching decision for the offense. You have an entire phase of the game, and you just decided to look around and hire the coach who didn’t really show any recent success in the NFL and just barely coached in college? Oh yeah, that’s real funny. His lack of any imagination in play calling over the first two games doesn’t inspire a lot of confidence for that side of the ball going forward, and that’s a real problem when you want to try to get talent.
Bill Belichick – Congrats is due for win number one in college, and clearly whatever is going on outside the locker room didn’t penetrate inside enough to affect how the team played Saturday. That said, really?
On one level, if you’re going to give him credit for anything, at least give him credit for actually giving a reason. His MO usually is to just either deny anything, deflect the question, or say it’s been misconstrued. Instead, he actually gave an answer confirming reports that he is preventing scouts from an NFL team from looking at college players. This is following the arrogant answer from GM Michael Lombardi earlier this week, in which he just responded with “Good Luck.”
The fact is that while Belichick and Lombardi have every reason to have this level of arrogance for their NFL success, their track record in college so far hasn’t earned them any benefit of the doubt. At some point, this pair needs to understand that in order to actually keep the fanbase engaged and to succeed in college where the whole goal is to get to the NFL, they need to pop their egos. The chances of that happening are next to none as both are getting their paychecks no matter what — but what was already a hard sell of support is getting harder as they are writing checks their results can’t cash.
But hey, at least they are keeping the Boston media machine going. Feels like they should ask for some sort of commission for how they keep giving them something to talk about up there.
Honorable Mentions
The back who many thought would be the lead for this season Davion Gause once again didn’t appear in the game that much, but when he did he was effective. He had five rush attempts for 30 yards including one twelve yard scamper. Right now it really does seem like the team wants to go with a committee approach, which is great for games but isn’t the best for guys who want to showcase skills to get to the next level…Chris Culliver was the leading receiver on the team but didn’t play at all in the second half, and you wonder if his injury played at least some role in the play calls. If he’s going to miss significant time, that’s a huge weapon that the Tar Heels will be lacking…Andrew Simpson had the distinction of recording Carolina’s first sack of the season with most of the third quarter done. While you can argue that was a function more of how Charlotte approached the game, going two games and only gathering one sack is not inspiring a lot of confidence with the offense they have in front of them.
Next up for Carolina is a normal week with a game leading up to Richmond on Saturday at 3:30pm. We’ll see if there is any further progression from this team.
