Position Grades from UNC Football’s loss to NC State

Over the last 11 seasons, UNC football had a losing record in five of them. The Tar Heels had lost their last four to NC State. UNC broke the bank to reverse those trends, but things went in reverse instead. The Tar Heels slipped from 6-7 to 4-8, making it six losing seasons out of 12. The last time UNC lost to Wake, Duke, and State in the same season was 1989. And now UNC has lost five in a row to Dave Doeren and the Wolfpack.

Carolina ended its season with a whimper in Raleigh. State finished 7-5 with a roster no one would accuse of being wildly more talented than UNC’s. This game came down to fundamentals: run the ball, defend the run, be the more disciplined team. Doeren’s team put this game out of reach in the first half by out-Belichicking Bill Belichick. Let’s review how.

Carolina spent most of the season determined to run the ball, often in predictable ways predicated on simply executing better than the opponent. It rarely worked. Carolina reversed course against State, attempting two passes for every run. Lopez and Johnson, who entered the game in the third quarter after Lopez was injured, spent a lot of the game on the move, rolling out or moving around the pocket to let receivers come open. Lopez had a beautiful pass to Shipp in the back corner of the end zone with a defender in his face for the Tar Heels’ first touchdown.

The run game provided little support, and the offensive line’s pass protection was hit and miss. To the extent the UNC offense produced anything, it came from the QBs’ arms and legs. That remained true after Au’Tori Newkirk entered the game on the final drive, leading a touchdown drive on 3-5 passing with a 13 yard run added to the mix. Both Lopez and Johnson tried too hard to force the ball to Jordan Shipp at times, and both took sacks when throwing the ball away would have been more advisable.

Heading into the final drive, UNC running backs had five carries for 13 yards. The run game was non-existent, and the play calling reflected the coach’s confidence in the line to move NC State off the line of scrimmage. UNC rushed for only 88 yards (removing sack yardage), and 50 of those came from the three QBs on scrambles and a couple of QB powers.

UNC doesn’t have the talent at QB to be one-dimensional. While Lopez and Johnson put forth valiant effort, the results were too inconsistent to keep pace with a State offense that scored every time it touched the ball in the first half. State recorded four sacks, more than they had in the prior three games combined. State hit Carolina QBs nine times, and that doesn’t include the post-whistle pile drive on Lopez that knocked him out of the game. That one’s on the officials, not the offensive line.

Once again, Shipp and Paysour accounted for almost half of UNC’s offensive production. Shipp had eight catches for 90 yards and a touchdown, and Paysour added five more for 49 yards. Five other pass catches added 46 yards on five catches, and Jordan Owens teamed with Newkirk for their first touchdown reception and pass as Tar Heels. It’s a shame the offensive coaching waited so long into the season to lean on this group’s talents.

Gause can block, and his usage the last two games has been primarily to pick up blitzes. Gause does that extremely well, and he added two catches for nine yards. The running backs once again did not feature prominently in the game plan, and as noted earlier the group totaled 13 yards on five carries prior to the final drive. The position group didn’t make any critical mistakes, but they didn’t make any plays either outside of Gause’s contributions stoning blitzing linebackers.

After two weeks of opposing running backs posting numbers well above their season averages, the Wolfpack’s running backs never really got going. Hollywood Smothers and Jayden Scott combined for 59 yards on 17 carries, numbers UNC would have found optimistic pre-game. Unfortunately, Will Wilson, the Wolfpack’s Wildcat QB, reprised the role of Duke’s Anderson Castle last week, a load and a half running through the middle of the line for four touchdowns and converting a number of other important short-yardage conversions. Duke and NC State feasted on the power run game inside the 10-yard lines and 4th and short. UNC never successfully reset the line of scrimmage to disrupt those plays. The pass rush in the first half consistently left huge gaps for Bailey to average almost 9 yards a carry.

On the opening drive, CJ Bailey converted a 3rd down and a 4th down by getting to the edge ahead of Khmori House. Bailey finished the game with 85 yards on eight carries, consistently eluding his spy to lead NC State to four touchdowns on all four of its first half drives. Tar Heel linebackers did nothing to slow, much less stop, Wilson’s touchdown runs between the tackles. This group made a lot of highlight plays in the backfield earlier in the season. However, when compressed into a phone booth or chasing, they simply did not get the job done against Wake Forest, Duke, or NC State.

Rather than review all of the issues with this group, let’s highlight some examples.

On State’s first touchdown pass, a tunnel screen, Thad Dixon pushed too far upfield and into the sideline, running himself out of the play. That’s hard to do on a tunnel screen. His blocker simply slid in between him and the ball carrier. Gavin Gipson at safety turned his back to the ball carrier to absorb a block rather than fighting through it to turn the ball back to the middle of the defense. Both of those efforts will probably be featured unfavorably in post-game social media film reviews.

On State’s second touchdown pass, Gipson reacts painfully late to the tight end’s route to the pylon. The catch gets made without contest. Add 70 yards in facemask, defensive pass interference, defensive holding, and unsportsmanlike conduct penalties. Kaleb Cost drew 40 of those alone. Bailey completed 66% of his passes for 201 yards on the night. Now throw in the penalty yardage.

UNC had a nice kickoff return down 7-0. A penalty wiped it out. Hardy had a nice punt return. A penalty wiped it out. State lined up to punt only once in the first half, but they ran a fake for a first down. UNC attempted an onside kick late in the game, and like last week it failed to go the necessary distance. Verhoff crushed a 49-yard field goal, though, and added another.

A perfect encapsulation of the Belichick Experiment:

Coming out of the third quarter break, NC State faced a 3rd and 1 at the UNC 15. Somehow, UNC didn’t have the right personnel on the field and drew both an offsides and illegal substitution penalty on the quarter’s opening play. State declined both of those penalties because their short yardage Wildcat QB powered all the way into the end zone on a simple QB power…because UNC wasn’t lined up properly. To cap it off, UNC drew an unsportsmanlike conduct penalty after that frustrating play was over.

That’s more than bad coaching; that’s high comedy if you’re not a UNC fan.

The defense allowed four touchdowns on all four State possessions in the first half. All were methodical, 11+ play drives that consistently saw the State offense one step ahead of UNC’s defense. There were no fluky 50-yard fumble recovery touchdowns or flea flickers. State just moved the ball at will, averaging six yards a play and racking up 271 yards total for an insurmountable 28-10 lead. State had a well-crafted game plan; UNC had no answer. The game was over at halftime.

One team ran the ball and stopped the run. It’s special teams had a trick up its sleeve to steal a possession. That team allowed the other team to beat itself with missed tackles and penalties. That was for a time a Bill Belichick trademark recipe for victory in the NFL, and Dave Doeren used it to blow out the Tar Heels in the season finale.