It’s the same old song and dance for Mack Brown and the UNC football program.
The offense comes out and gets off to a good start, putting up points early on. Heck, outside of the fumble by Drake Maye, the Tar Heels played well as they scored 32 points and had 367 total yards of offense.
Then the defense hits the field and it’s a nightmare. Simply put, Gene Gizik’s unit isn’t good, like not at all this year. That’s clear through four games and became even more of a reality when Notre Dame hung 40-plus on them and racked up 576 yards of total offense. Yeah, that same Notre Dame team led by backup Drew Pyne that is 1-2 on the year and barely beat Cal.
It was pathetic in Chapel Hill on Saturday afternoon but sadly we should have seen it coming.
Going back to Week 1, UNC’s defense has been a glaring problem as they let FAMU hang in the game for the first half. A week later, Chase Brice and Appalachian State hung 60 on them. Heck, Georgia State was moving it with ease at times. But UNC had the offense to win those games and it masked some of the problems.
Now, we are at a point where there is no masking the problem and the truth needs to come out. This defense is bad, like among the worst in college football bad and there’s no solution on the horizon.
Following Saturday’s game, Mack Brown was brutally honest about his defense via Inside Carolina:
“Our defense has been inconsistent since we’ve been here. So what I would say is support these kids and pick them up and be so positive and try to encourage them, because they’re trying really, really hard. And there’s some very talented players out there that are gonna keep getting better. I think tonight, anybody that walks out of this and couldn’t say that they were better than we were, doesn’t understand football. I mean, the Jimmies and the Joes, they had more than we did.”
While UNC’s secondary struggled to limit big plays, the run defense was gashed. They gave up 287 yards on the ground and it got to the point where everyone knew the Fighting Irish were going to run it and UNC still couldn’t stop it.
I don’t know where this defense goes from here as we enter ACC play and I don’t know how you fix it on the fly. But if UNC doesn’t score 50 or 60 a game on offense each game, they may not have a shot in many games.
And that’s disappointing.
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