UNC faces Virginia at home in an ACC tilt Saturday, with kick-off set for noon. Let’s look inside the numbers for these two programs this year and see if we find a plausible path to victory for our Tar
Heels.
2025 Season So Far: Edge Virginia
The Cal loss moved UNC up from 101st to 98th this week. Progress! A win over Virginia could push the team’s body of work up the charts a few more places. Meanwhile, UVA’s lone loss to NC State doesn’t even count in conference standings, since it was scheduled outside of the official ACC lineup.
Virginia has been living dangerously, reeling off close win after close win. The FSU and Louisville games went to OT, and Washington State went down to the wire, with a crucial mistake on special team costing the Cougars a safety and the game. The Cavaliers were not so fortunate against NC State, missing an open receiver on an errant pass that would have given the Cavaliers a late lead.
Virginia’s a play away from 7-0 and three away from 3-4. That’s fairly normal for college football, where contests between teams of roughly equivalent talent usually come down to one team making a key play and the other making a mistake. We saw that for the Heels against California. Virginia’s resume, however, suggests they’re playing on a level above UNC’s. Either Carolina levels up dramatically, or Virginia will need to contribute a couple of turnovers and a lot of penalties for the Tar Heels to be in it at the end.
Tar Heel Offense vs Cavaliers Defense: Edge Virginia (modest)
Virginia’s defense has been solid but not great, landing smack dab in the middle of the college football bell curve. The Cavaliers lead the conference in turnover margin, but much of that has been good fortune. Virginia’s recovered 5 of their opponent fumbles while losing none of their own. Vegas will tell you that fumble recoveries aren’t in their predictor models for a reason; they’re mostly luck. That said, we do see defenses get opportunistic, much like a shooter can get hot in basketball, before regressing to the mean. UNC hopefully will protect the ball a bit better Saturday.
As for the UNC offense, much has been written and much frustration expressed. Some Carolina beat writers even suggest it may be the worst Tar Heel offense in 100 years. We know its warts. We did see some improvement against California. However, the game script never forced the offense out of its comfort zone to keep up with an opponent moving the ball up and down the field. Speaking of which…
Tar Heel Defense vs Cavaliers Offense: Edge Virginia (massive)
Virginia leads the ACC in scoring, while UNC ranks 11th in preventing points. FEI (which excludes FCS games) ranks Virginia’s offense ahead of TCU’s (31st) and Clemson’s (50th). SP+ has UVA’s offense ranked about 20 spots below TCU’s and 20 above Clemson’s. We remember what the TCU and Clemson offenses did in Chapel Hill.
FEI says this unit battle is much more a mismatch than SP+, but both show a clear advantage for Virginia. If Virginia can get a two-score lead and force UNC to pass more, we could see the same sort of snowball we saw against Clemson and TCU, both games that were effectively over by halftime.
Virginia’s offense doesn’t really have a “star” that UNC might scheme to take away. Chandler Morris, the QB, probably comes closest, ranking 4th in the ACC in QBR and 24th nationally. J’Mari Taylor, their leading rusher, ranks 6th in the ACC with 73 yards per game. Their leading receiver, Trell Harris, lands at 17th in the conference at 60 yards per game. The offense distributes the ball to a host of guys and generates a ton of plays eating up 10+ yards at a time (106 on the year so far). They come at you from all directions. The Belichicks Three have their work cut out for them.
Special Teams: Edge Virginia (slight)
Virginia’s special teams have been excellent across the board, especially at returning kicks. The match between their punt return team and our punt cover team looks to be another sizable mismatch in their favor. That could be a problem if the Tar Heels have to punt a lot (the Tar Heels tend to punt a lot). Last Friday, UNC used punts and field position to pin Cal’s offense near their end zone a couple of times and limit their playbook. UNC special teams helped keep that game close. Virginia, on the other hand, might pop some big returns and bust this thing wide open.
Odds Review
Virginia opened as a 10.5 point favorite, with an over/under of 52. That’s an implied result somewhere around 31-21. Vegas has priced the TCU, UCF, and Clemson results into their models, so you have to wonder if Vegas sees a bit more potential in this UNC team than they’ve shown so far. The oddsmakers also might be hedging on a bit of regression for Virginia on the luck and turnover front. The Tar Heels covered the spread against a P4 team, California, for the first time all season. Will Saturday be the second?
Summary
Personally, this game feels like a mismatch to me in a way Cal didn’t. Cal’s offensive line hasn’t been great this year, and their freshman phenom QB has yet to find a go-to playmaker among their skill players. Cal dropped a lot of passes without help from a UNC DB. Our special teams did a good job creating field position advantages. UNC stopped the run and made Cal one-dimensional, which other opponents have also accomplished. In turn, that allowed the UNC offense to stay in its game plan of running the ball and low-risk pass plays. We saw complementary football in a P4 game for the first time all season, albeit against a bad opponent.
That formula will be hard to replicate against the Cavaliers. Virginia’s offense and return game could easily run out to a big lead, which would force the offense to do more of what it does worst. I’d be surprised if the Cavs didn’t. But, it’s a been a year of weird results and big surprises, with some upsets no one saw coming. Maybe UNC forces 3 red zone fumbles and recovers all of them, given that Virginia is due some regression on that front. Maybe the defense grabs an interception and gives the offense a short field. Maybe the offense scrapes together a couple of TD drives and springs Shipp on a long one. 21-17 Heels? It could happen.
Go Heels
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