The North Carolina football team did not pummel Wake Forest Saturday night. The North Carolina program did, with players of all ages, shapes and sizes getting into the game. And that is an important distinction in Larry Fedora’s quest to bring championships back to Chapel Hill in the oblong sport.

Without five players on the defensive two-deep and showing more weapons than the New England Patriots on offense, the Tar Heels took the first quarter off and then scored 50 points over the next 32 minutes against the undermanned and overwhelmed Demon Deacons, who didn’t know what hit them once the blitzkrieg began.

Imagine if Carolina had started playing at 7 p.m. with everyone else and hadn’t called off the dogs over the last 10 minutes. The final might have been 80-14 instead of 50-14, as the Heels opened 2-0 in the ACC for the first time since 1997 in the Mack Brown era and third time since 1984 in the Dick Crum era. The last time UNC won five of its first six games was 2011, before that season collapsed under interim coach Everett Withers. This season holds no such promise.

Marquise Williams completed his first three passes, two to the guys in the gold helmets and white unies. Then the Marquis de sod had a stern talk with himself on the sideline and, once again, was the best player on the field. He hit his walk-on speedster Mack Hollins with three passes, two bombs and all touchdowns. Waterbug Austin Proehl, whose father starred for Wake Forest (before playing 17 seasons in the NFL) had four catches, one turning into a sideline sprint to the half-yard line, and those guys are like the fourth- and fifth-receivers in Fedora’s big-play playbook.

The quick-strike offense and blundering officials created plenty of noise in the less-than-full, fall-break house during a rare mid-October night game as the points climbed and the temperature dropped at about the same rate in Kenan Stadium. The Tar Heels’ seven touchdowns – they averaged 10 yards per snap overall – used up barely eight minutes of clock time, their four second-quarter scores coming on drives that took in 52 seconds, 1:36, :21 and 1:47. By then, the upset-minded Deacons faced their fourth loss of the season against wins over Elon, Army and Boston College. Their ranking as the 15th best total defense in the country proved a sham, a product of their impotent opposition after being shredded for 538 yards, 152 more than Wake had given up in any other game.

Seriously, Carolina might have run up a thousand yards, except that the Deacs’ game plan to hold the ball and keep Carolina off the field worked only in holding down the score. The officials played their part, as well, when they ruled Ryan Switzer called for a fair catch before returning a punt to inside the Wake Forest 10. Switzer never raised either arm before nonchalantly catching the punt and the blasting out of the pack. He was called for delay of game for taking up the refs’ valuable time after supposedly calling for the phantom fair catch. The zebras caught it between the stripes from the home crowd the rest of the game.

Wake managed one touchdown in each half, thanks to Gene Chizik’s bend-don’t-break defense, which continues its remarkable turnaround from last season’s sieve-like unit under an entirely different defensive staff. The Tar Heels held Wake to 54 yards in the second half after given up 256 in the first, led by the best linebacker duo in the ACC, Shak Rashad and Jeff Schoettmer, who have noses for the ball and hit whoever has it very hard.

Chiz and Fed make up an equally good coaching combo, the D-coordinator who stays in the box upstairs, glasses on the tip of his nose and calming a slow-starting defense through the headset and the Red-Bull hyped head coach who wears out the sideline like a mad scientist. They have put together a team that can go places after passing the halfway mark on the schedule.

It was a night under the stars and for the stars, from Williams’ fourth pass to Mitch Trubisky’s fake-and-run for the seventh TD before Fedora emptied his thin bench. In between, Elijah Hood ran for 100-plus more yards, exploding for 29 and 36 yards on the 21-second scoring drive. Why not give No. 34 the ball more, the fans want to know and let the running game set up the pass instead of vice versa?

Good question about the seemingly underutilized sophomore from Charlotte, but who can argue with 50 points in a little more than two quarters? The Tar Heels keep steam-rolling through a conducive schedule that has 2-4 Virginia coming up Saturday before what looks like their toughest test at surprising 5-1 Pitt, which dealt ACC Coastal Division favorite Georgia Tech an un-imanageable fifth straight loss Saturday. Clearly, the Coastal is Carolina’s for the taking, if it just will.

That’s what good programs do.