Two times this season there was real hope and excitement inside Kenan Stadium. Two times those hopes were dashed in such a fashion that creates wounds that’ll fester and be tough to heal. On Saturday, Kenan Stadium was hyped up as the Tar Heels actually put together a couple of good second half drives and seemed to finally have momentum against a quality opponent, only to see it fade away into the Chapel Hill darkness.
Carolina is now 0-2 against the Big Four, Bill Belichick is 0-1 against the team
he apparently grew up hating (sarcasm doesn’t translate over text sometimes), and the Tar Heels go into a place that’s been a house of horrors for them to finish up a completely disappointing 2025 football season.
So now that we’ve gone over that sunshine, let’s talk about the winners, losers, and honorable mentions for Saturday’s loss to Duke.
Winners
Gio Lopez: Look, let’s get this part out of the way. It’s clear that Lopez isn’t the answer at quarterback, and if this staff were truly interesting in building a program he would have been benched and one of the promising freshmen recruits would have had a start by now. That said, you can’t have anything but respect for the game he put up on Saturday. He was 21-27 passing, gained 20 yards on the ground, ran and passed for a touchdown, and took so much punishment you’d understand if he would have just laid down and given up. He kept taking hit after hit, especially during that second half when Carolina took the lead, and only got the benefit of one roughing the passer call. It’s tough to blame him for the failure of the last two drives when Duke just sent the house and the offensive play calling seemed to regress once they had the lead. He deserves all the kudos for not giving up, and you wonder—for good reason—if he’ll have the same resolve next week.
Jordan Shipp: The leading pass catcher for the Tar Heels with eight for 83 yards and the touchdown that gave the team the lead. Shipp has shown a maturity beyond his years—which says something considering the immaturity shown Saturday—and the staff needs to prioritize keeping him in the fold. It’s clear he has some skills and better play by the quarterback position would have had his stats pop more. He’ll be a prime target for other schools to pilfer in the transfer portal, and he would be a huge loss for the offense.
Andrew Simpson: Second on the defense with six total tackles, but led the team with four solos and had an amazing three quarterback hurries on the day. The Boise State transfer played his last home game Saturday, and he had his most solo tackles since the loss to TCU. He’s been a great addition for the team, and you just hate the effort came in a loss, not to mention players around him on defense couldn’t keep their cool which hurt the Tar Heels overall.
Losers
Freddie Kitchens: Behind the scenes the blame game is already landing on the offensive coordinator who got the job because he…just kept coming to work. Saturday’s game really did shine a light on just how much Gio Lopez’s issues are laid at the feet at the OC. When the Tar Heels were behind and had to change things up on offense Lopez was given a chance to succeed with options, runs, and the calls built off his confidence. As soon as Carolina had the lead, though, Kitchens didn’t adjust to the Duke pressure and Lopez was hung out to dry on two drives to end the game. Any change this offseason has to start at that position, though the question is if anyone will actually take the job considering the absolute cluster of a situation that exists in Chapel Hill.
Bill Belichick: This is about the macro of the program. He clearly didn’t understand the huge target painted on his chest when he came into college, and Luke DeCock did a great job of pointing this out on Sunday. Coaches are getting a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to out-coach a legend, and considering the criticism Manny Diaz has taken at Duke and Miami before that, you knew he would want any chance for his ego to say he out-coached Belichick. College football has a level of petty that you just don’t see in the pros. It ultimately is added to the list of things that both GM Mike Lombardi and Belichick didn’t account for coming into college. Former Tar Heel Blog writer Jake Lawrence put it best by noting that their ego told them they needed to completely burn things down instead of build on what Mack Brown had in place, and it may be the biggest reason this season will be a failure.
That’s just the macro. In the game itself? Twelve penalties for 108 yards including a ridiculous number of unsportsmanlike penalties. Five of six fourth down conversions by the Blue Devils. The special teams not only giving up a roughing the kicker penalty that resulted in a touchdown on the very next play, but then gave up that horrid fake field goal—credit to Diaz for the play call—and compounded the mistake by not letting him go ahead and score to maximize time for the offense and save some timeouts. The extra play for Duke ran time off the clock and resulted in another unsportsmanlike penalty that made the two-point conversion easier for Duke to convert. All of these are signs of a poorly coached team, which is the last thing that was expected when Belichick was hired.
UNC Football: This whole season has been a failure of monumental proportions. The Tar Heels haven’t gotten the ratings they were expecting, the sold out Kenan Stadium had tickets going on the secondary market for under $30 a seat meaning season ticket holders were taking a bath, and you have no choice but to stick it out with Belichick for one more season. Unlike James Franklin, no one is going to be idiotic enough to hire Bill Belichick if you fire him to offset the amount of money that you owe him, and he sure as hell isn’t getting hired by the NFL. Even with a better home schedule next year that includes Notre Dame and NC State, you’re probably looking at a significant amount of ticket drop off unless you cut the price of tickets, and you’re probably also looking at a significant amount of money not coming to the Ram’s Club for those donors who don’t care to be on the list to get season tickets anymore. There is no other way to look at it besides the fact that this season has been a failure in so many ways and they are going to keep paying for it next year.
Honorable Mentions
Demon June has significantly cooled off and has been mostly usurped by Davion Gause. It’s a reminder of the hope fans had for Gause at the start of the season and how much room June has to grow. It’ll be interesting to see if both players come back next season, or if one/both are targets in the transfer portal for a team that needs a steadier hand in the backfield…Kobe Paysour was part of the penalty problem but it’s tough to blame him specifically since it was his last game in Kenan Stadium and he clearly has every reason to be frustrated at how the season turned out. You wish he had been rewarded a little bit more for staying at Carolina when he probably could have been a bigger piece at a ton of other schools.
Mercifully the season is done next Saturday starting at 7:30 against NC State. It’ll be Bill Belichick’s first taste of just how much the game means to the local fanbase, and his last chance to leave fans with a decent taste in their mouths for the future.
