There comes a time after every game, win or lose, when an athlete takes off the uniform, exits the facility and returns home. It’s probably their first time alone since waking up that morning. That time – be it a minute or an hour – provides time to reflect, rejoice, or – in the case of UNC linebacker Cedric Gray last weekend – let out some grief.
Gray was coming off statistically his best game at Carolina. He’d amassed a whopping 18 tackles against Virginia, but that didn’t matter to him. All he could think about, he said, was UNC’s first loss of the season.
“I was very, very, very disappointed after the game,” Gray told reporters this week. “I was angry, sad. All of the emotions were coming out of me. Every thought went through my head.”
Now, Gray says he’s fully over the post-loss hangover, and ready to help the Tar Heels redeem themselves against the Yellow Jackets.
“Of course there’s a moment where you’re like, ‘I wanted to go undefeated.’ That’s always the goal,” he said. “But you can’t get stuck on that too much. We still have all our goals ahead of us. We still can accomplish everything we set out to accomplish this year. We call it the 24-Hour Rule. Whether you win or lose, you dwell on it for 24 hours, and then you move on.”
Tight end John Copenhaver, a Georgia native who will be playing in front of numerous friends and family in Atlanta on Saturday, said last Sunday’s team meeting acted as group therapy for the shaken Tar Heels, and also the starting block for preparation for this weekend.
“Everyone was upset,” said Copenhaver. “Frustrated, mad. We took Sunday and dealt with it, watched film, put that to bed, and now we’re on to Georgia Tech. I think it put a fire under our butts that we needed.”
Carolina will need that fire when it takes the field at Bobby Dodd Stadium, a venue that has historically been a house of horrors for the Tar Heels. When including a visit to nearby Mercedes-Benz Stadium in 2021, UNC has lost 10 of its last 12 visits to Georgia Tech. The Jackets have won two straight overall against Carolina, each of which were upsets over ranked UNC teams. Last year’s loss in Chapel Hill was the first of Carolina’s four-game losing streak to end the season.
Tech clearly has no fear of the Tar Heels, regardless of UNC’s still-lofty goals for the remainder of the season. Gray, who still has not beaten the Jackets in his college career, said he’s learned his lesson.
“I said this last week and I’ll say it again this week: we cannot look at records,” he said. “That doesn’t mean anything. There are talented people on every team. Obviously, Georgia Tech has our number. They were the start to the crash of our season last year. It’s a lot of built-up anger. I definitely think the guys are ready to attack this week and ready to get after Georgia Tech.”
The loss to Virginia took the shine almost completely away from the Tar Heels, who had just broken into the Top 10 and were fancying a trip to the College Football Playoff. Now, as the team heads south toward unfriendly confines, the noise is coming from the opposite direction. Head coach Mack Brown said he hopes that noise, as Copenhaver put it earlier, lights a fire under the team’s collective rear end.
“Everybody’s been patting these guys on the back for six weeks,” Brown said. “That won’t happen this week. When they go out to eat, it won’t be the same looks. People will be staring at them instead of hugging them. There’s a difference, and that’s just the way it is. That’s the way our world is.”
Saturday’s matchup is a golden opportunity for the Tar Heels, and not just because of the colors on the stadium. It’s a chance to earn redemption, not only for last weekend but for last year as well. It’s also a chance to let out that built-up anger Gray described, anger which has simmered from when the clock struck zero against the Jackets last November to when it strikes 8 p.m. tomorrow.
And the best way to let that anger out? Making sure that – unlike last year – Carolina’s losing streak stops at one.
Featured image via UNC Athletic Communications/Jeffrey A. Camarati
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