There were some good signs in UNC’s performance against #3 Notre Dame in Kenan Stadium, certainly as compared with their embarrassing collapse against Clemson. Losing by 11 to a team favored by 21, and posting twice as many points in a game as the Fighting Irish had allowed in any game so far this season, is not nothing. But at the same time, the game wasn’t quite as close as the final score and there were long portions of the game when the Tar Heels looked exactly as hopelessly outmatched as expected.
And furthermore, I’m only here to grade what gets put in front of me, not to grade on a curve based on low expectations. Like Dusty Dvoracek said on broadcast, at some point, regardless of who’s lining up across from you, you’ve gotta start putting up some wins.
Quarterback: C-
Billy Edwards’s first drive appeared to help him shake off his dreadful performance against Clemson. He didn’t do too much, but found Jordan Shipp for a couple of chunk plays and then tossed a walk-in touchdown to Shemar Easter in the red zone. And then the nightmare reappeared: two of Edwards’ next three passes were intercepted, both picks entirely on him and the kind that you’re playing a veteran QB specifically to avoid: the first, when he didn’t feel a rusher closing in and got his arm hit rather than eating a sack, the second when he just completely missed a roaming safety who picked off a moonball. Both led to Notre Dame touchdowns that looked like they might break the game wide open. But then, given a chance to run a two-minute drill down the length of the field, he put together easily his best drive of the season, finding quick completion after quick completion, most of them to tight ends and a couple of them absolute seeds, capping it off with a nice throw to the front pylon for a Jelani Thurman touchdown that got his team to within a score at half.
That pattern basically repeated itself in the second half: Edwards failed to get anything going for two drives, missing a couple of passes he should have had and ending with 2 quick punts, and then marched down the field on a scoring drive in which he looked like what he was supposed to look like the whole time to make the score respectable. A final line of 17/28 for 208 yards and 3 touchdowns would have been more than serviceable for Edwards, but the 2 picks put quite a damper on it. Perhaps this version of Edwards would have beaten Clemson, but unless he takes care of the ball, it’s still not good enough for the rest of this season.
Running Backs: C-
For the first time all season, the UNC run game was bottled up against a defensive front that, for most of the game, gave the Heels’ backs nowhere to go. Jaylen McGill and Demon June had one solid run apiece, and Benjamin Hall had a garbage time 8-yarder to salvage his stats from bad to just mediocre. Even with those, all three backs averaged worse than 4 yards a carry, and only 2 of their 20 attempts went for first downs. June added a 12-yard reception in the 4th quarter that provided something, and both June and Hall acquitted themselves well in pass protection, contributing to Edwards taking just one sack all game against a front that was, again, dominating UNC’s offensive line.
Wide Receivers and Tight Ends: A-
As he’s been just about every game, Jordan Shipp was UNC’s best offensive player on the field. After a history of solid, steady games, Shipp put together the first 100-yard performance of his career, catching all 7 of his targets for 109 yards. That included receptions at all three levels of the field and displayed both his route-running and after-catch ability, and two weeks after a game where he was visibly and justifiably frustrated at how often he was open and not getting the ball, this game looked like a bit of a corrective for him and his on-field relationship with his quarterback. Opposite him, C.J. Sadler returned to the lineup and ran a few good routes but ended up with just one first-down catch. The rest of Edwards’ completions went to tight ends Jelani Thurman and Shemar Easter. Easter had a manufactured touchdown and one impressive catch through tight coverage; it was certainly his best performance of the season. And after I questioned how much Thurman’s production thus far had been a product of force-feeding rather than talent, he certainly went a long way towards justifying it in this game, especially in the Heels’ 1st half-ending drive, where he caught three of his five receptions, all by simply toasting Notre Dame safeties. The last was his first of two touchdowns, where he absolutely turned around his counterpart on a short corner to the front pylon. His second score of the day included a nifty move to break a tackle and find the end zone. I’m still not sure he should be out-targeting Shipp (8 to 7 in this game), but he certainly earned those targets more in this game than in UNC’s first 3.
Offensive Line: C-
Billy Edwards may have only been sacked once, but he was under a fair amount of pressure otherwise — the hit on his arm that created his first interception is the most obvious example, but right tackle Andrew Threatt was getting worked all game by Boubacar Traore, who finished with 4 hurries and a pass breakup. Similarly, they weren’t completely embarrassed in the run game so much as they were just consistently slightly worse aside from a couple of plays. The tackle positions and left guard wore the worst of it, while Christo Kelly had himself another decent game. He’s had a significantly better season thus far than I expected, given the available evidence before this year.
Defensive Line: D
The only thing saving this unit from a failing grade is their goal-line stand close to the end of the first half, which gave the UNC offense the opportunity to keep themselves in the game with a length-of-the-field drive. As they were last year, the Heels look to be a legitimately great red-zone defense, capable of bowing up and owning the line of scrimmage when teams get close to the goal line. But other than that, they were pretty much dominated. Quarterback C.J. Carr was pretty much unbothered the whole day, taking no sacks and being hurried just twice en route to a surgical day. And in the second half, the Fighting Irish simply leaned on the UNC defensive line and ran the ball for successful gains over and over and over again. They rotated backs a little and it didn’t really matter; all three of them picked up better than 5 yards a carry en route to 241 yards on 45 totes. Just in the second half, Notre Dame picked up 168 yards on 30 carries, and because they could do that, the UNC offense never got the ball with a chance to take a lead, even after a special teams score brought them back within a point. Even with Melkart Abou-Jaoude back, this unit just doesn’t appear to have the depth necessary to stop the run and play strong deep into games.
Linebackers: B
Because the defensive line was getting washed out of the way so consistently, there was ample opportunity for Derek McDonald and Peyton Seelmann to collect a lot of tackles, and so they did. McDonald picked up 12 total tackles and Seelmann finished with 9, and Jonathan Agumadu, spelling both of them, had 7 of his own. They do get some credit for keeping most of Notre Dame’s runs from becoming explosive plays; the Irish only broke 2 runs longer than 15 yards. And they did okay in coverage as well, with Seelmann recording a pass breakup and McDonald sticking to tight ends on a few occasions that made it harder for Carr to get rid of the ball. This wasn’t a situation where tackles were simply a symptom of being on the field; I think the UNC linebackers were probably the best defensive unit they had. Notre Dame got to the intermediate area of the field a lot, but it was UNC who was able to control the game a little when the ball got there.
Secondary: C-
Irish receiver Jordan Faison torched absolutely everybody he went up against, catching 8 of his 9 targets for 132 yards and 2 scores. On the first, he just beat safety Peyton Waters over the top on a post route, and on the second, he took advantage of a coverage bust on a slot fade. The UNC secondary didn’t fare too much better against everybody else; there’s a reason Carr was 21/29 on the day with 4 touchdowns. The spot opposite Jaiden Patterson continues to be an adventure. Tre Miller was asked to play pretty far off in situations that needed the opposite, and he was also subbed out for a few other players throughout the game who were quickly identified and targeted. Greg Smith had his quietest day of the season, while Patterson himself had 2 pass breakups but also saw himself on the bad end of several plays.
Special Teams: C+
On one hand, Jaden Jefferson’s first official touch of the season was a second-half-opening kickoff return for a touchdown, bringing the Heels within a point and giving the Heels a real sense that they could win this game. On the other, the reason that kickoff return didn’t outright tie it up was because of a fumbled snap on the extra-point attempt, a problem that admittedly plagued both teams for the majority of the game on a rain-drenched afternoon.
The Heels had other issues on special teams, too, however. They could have changed the game a lot earlier on Notre Dame’s first punt of the game, when the punter dropped the snap and could easily have been blocked if the Heels had maintained their technique — don’t attack the leg, but take the ball off the punter’s foot. When UNC was punting, Notre Dame got to Aeron Burrell every time. He drew one meaningless running-into-the-kicker penalty and was able to kick it pretty well, but it’s worrying that the unit was that leaky up front, including being called for a hold right up the middle. And that leakiness extended to a Rece Verhoff extra point being blocked late in the game. But that special teams score probably outweighs all of that, though it’s much less likely to be a recurring trend than the issues that popped up.
Coaching: B+
The fact that, without a functional run game and while losing the turnover battle, this team managed to stay within 11 points of a team that has been running roughshod through every opponent they’ve seen is no small feat, and points to Bill Belichick having his team ready to take advantage in the margins where they could. Maybe a kickoff return touchdown is a little fluky, but deploying a returner who had basically not seen the field all season is not, and having the team ready to return something is also not nothing in a college football environment that still heavily encourages touchbacks. You could say the same about the turnaround from the fourth down goal-line stand into a full-field touchdown drive; that’s just classic complementary football that gave this team a legitimate fighting chance. I could quibble with some of the defensive personnel decisions, and especially where targets went in the passing game in the second half, but if there’s anywhere to grade on a curve, it’s here, and this was a well-coached game the kind we have not often seen maybe since the start of this decade, if not earlier.
