It was the first real Carolina football weekend we’ve had in almost two years.

From the new Old East Tavern along Raleigh Road, to the Casual Pint in the Blue Hill District, to Fridays on the Front Porch at the Carolina Inn, to authentic Chapel Hill buzz down on West Franklin Street, we were ready to see if Mack Brown’s Tar Heels could win a must-win game Saturday.

Everyone was decked out in their outfits of today, from adults in shorts and t-shirts to the flowered formal wear that marks the end of fraternity and sorority rush, all hoping the weekend would continue as it started and offset the uneven season-so-far with such promise.

To embrace the words of transformational author Wayne Dyer, “You will see it when you believe it.” We wanted his Erroneous Zones to become our end zones, lots of them. At the end, to see it was to believe it.

A performance that finally matched preseason hype, with the offense rolling up 699 total yards on the way to 59 points and the defense good enough when it had to be in the second half of Carolina’s first win over Virginia since 2016, including two defeats at a Kenan Stadium that would have none of it this day.

“We started our streak tonight with Virginia, we’re 1-0,” Brown said after the 59-39 thriller in Chapel Hiller.

The Tar Pit, jammed with students 90 minutes before kickoff, greeted the players raucously from their first entrance onto the field to when the team ran down to see their peers after the third quarter, everyone waving four fingers to the pounding music.

The Heels jumped to their first of three 14-point leads in the game early when Virginia penalties pushed its offense out of field goal range and then the Cavs coughed up the ball on the way to the end zone.

Carolina did not look the gift Hoos in the mouth, eating up yardage with striking precision.

Sam Howell, who ran and threw for 419 total yards, hit Josh Downs with two lightning bolts, the second a spectacular stretch-out by the sophomore slot receiver in the deep right corner of the endzone. Brown said before the game that “5 to 7 plays would determine the outcome,” and here is my list of those plays.

  • On UNC’s first possession after Virginia cut the lead to 14-7, Howell hit sophomore split receiver Khafre Brown for a 75-yard scoring bomb. Khafre, timed last season as the fastest player on the team, is coming off an injury and the key to Howell long balls if opponents double Downs underneath.
  • After Sam’s poor-throw pick in the end zone led to a 14-point swing and Virginia somehow taking a 28-24 lead at the half, transfer Ty Chandler broke a 60-yard run on the second play of the third quarter that led to Howell hitting Garrett Walston for the go-ahead touchdown. Chandler finished with 198 yards and two TDs, averaging 9.9 yards per tote.
  • Downs showed up as dual threat, returning Virginia’s punt 38 yards to the Wahoos 37, setting up Carolina’s next score on a nine-play drive that debuted freshman Caleb Hood as a Carter-Javonte type back. Caleb carried five times to the end zone to put the resilient Tar Heels up by 10 points.
  • After Virginia settled for a field goal, the Heels scored their third straight touchdown of the half as the Chandler-Hood combo continued to emerge on seven straight running players on their most-time-consuming drive of the game (4-plus minutes), ending with Ty’s first of two touchdowns and UNC’s third 14-point lead of the game.
  • On the very next play from scrimmage, strong safety Ja’Qurious Conley made an acrobatic interception on the Virginia sideline that led to a nine-play touchdown drive (seven runs) and culminated with Howell hitting tight end Komari Morales, who had dropped a key pass earlier, and a 52-31 lead.

Behind by 21 points with 12 minutes left on the clock, there was simply not enough time for Virginia to catch up, despite quarterback Brennan Armstrong completing a career night with his fourth touchdown pass on the way to 554 yards through the friendly skies of Carolina.

Mack Brown called it a shootout between “two of the best quarterbacks in the country,” as Armstrong and Howell combined for 861 yards and nine touchdowns. Carolina’s attack was far more balanced, with 47 rushing plays and 21 throws, compared to Virginia’s 54 passes and 22 runs that resulted in an average carry of 1 yard. That’s right, one measly yard.

Despite UNC being favored by a touchdown, it was a game many pundits were picking Virginia to win and Brown himself predicted would go down to the last possession for the third straight year in the South’s oldest football rivalry.

The 20-point pounding will revive some of the hype that carried 21st-ranked Carolina into the season and gives the Tar Heels the tie-breaker over Virginia if they should tie for the Coastal Division championship.

That could still be the case, as the ACC continued to suffer on the fields and scoreboards. Miami, Pitt and Virginia Tech all lost non-conference games and Clemson struggled at home to defeat Georgia Tech, which is Carolina’s next, and fourth straight night time, opponent in Atlanta this Saturday.

Let the madness continue. As Wayne Dyer says, to see it is to believe it. In Chapel Hill, it was almost beyond belief.

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