Is Larry Fedora a great football coach? We probably won’t know for a couple of years.

So let’s talk about what we DO know, while some segment of Tar Heel Nation continues to freak out over Saturday’s 70-41 flogging at East Carolina.

Fedora’s first team gave up 68 points at home to Georgia Tech and still finished 8-4, denied a spot in the ACC championship game and a bowl by the NCAA probation he inherited.

Fedora’s second team gave up 55 points at home to East Carolina, started 1-5 and rallied to earn a bid to the Belk Bowl, where it whipped Cincinnati to finish 7-6.

Fedora thus became the first UNC football coach since Ray Wolf in 1936 and ’37 to have winning teams in his first two seasons.

The three-year NCAA probation cost Carolina 15 scholarships, three a season, but in actuality it was anywhere from a 5-7 year penalty. Here’s why:

  • Butch Davis’ last recruiting class was subpar because UNC football was already under investigation and rival coaches never let prep players and their families forget that.
  • Everett Withers’ one season as interim head coach was almost a complete wash-out in recruiting because, frankly, everyone knew Withers was only keeping the head coach’s chair warm for the new permanent guy.
  • Of the 20 (of an NCAA allowed 25) scholarships Fedora has given out each year since his arrival in late 2011, some of those were warm bodies because his true targets did not want to play for a tarnished program.
  • And now that he can award the full allotment of 25 again, most of those players don’t get on the field or make a true impact for at least one year.

In a nutshell, that’s why East Carolina appeared to have bigger, stronger, faster and, in a very real sense, smarter players; the Pirates are a veteran team that doesn’t make as many dumb mistakes as a young team.

That’s also why Fedora only accepted the UNC job with a seven-year contract instead of the traditional five, because he anticipated much (if not all) of what was to happen his first few seasons. “A reasonable request, given all we were going through,” Athletic Director Bubba Cunningham said at the time.

And let’s look at what has happened since Fedora has been here. Players with a season of eligibility have left for the NFL – Gio Bernard, Russell Bodine and Eric Ebron, to name three. The last two contributed to opening this season with the thinnest offensive line in Fedora’s three years.

And injuries, suspensions and academic failures have compounded the problem, losing Landon Turner and Jon Heck already this season in games two and three, forcing talented true freshman Jared Cohen into a starting role and sophomore Lucas Crowley to play three different positions. That has had something to do with UNC’s bevy of really good running backs not getting off to a fast start.

The defense that was shredded for a school record 70 points and 789 yards in Greenville has been playing with banged-up leader Norkeithus Otis and is without projected starters Darius Lipford, Shawn Underwood and Brandon Ellerbe, plus second-stringer Greg Webb. They all lost, and failed to regain, their more-closely-monitored academic eligibility since last spring.

And how about defensive end Marquis Haynes, who committed to Carolina two years ago, went to Fork Union after being denied eligibility and was supposedly set to enroll last January in time for spring practice? Haynes apparently was denied admission again and is now starting for 10th-ranked Ole Miss as a freshman.

So: thin on first-line talent, thin in the weight room because of not yet enough reps and thin on experience that leads to missed assignment and killer penalties. Plus, rotating quarterbacks who have yet to gel, which is a nice way to characterize the uneven play of junior Marquise Williams and freshman Mitch Trubisky.

At this point, a 2-1 record is what most of us expected; in fact, 2-2 after the trip to Clemson, where Carolina won once under Dick Crum (1980), once under Mack Brown (1997) and once under John Bunting (2001). Butch Davis teams never played at Clemson, and this is Fedora’s first visit to Death Valley as a Tar Heel.

With a winnable home game against 2-2 Virginia Tech to follow and a trip to Notre Dame on October 11th, a 3-3 record is where I had the Heels before the season after six games. The last six against Georgia Tech, at Virginia, at Miami, Pitt, at Duke and N.C. State are what will make or break 2014.