It could be too much to ask a bunch of 20-year-olds to spit in the face of history.
But that may be required to rectify perhaps the worst loss Carolina football has ever suffered.
Virginia came into Kenan Stadium Saturday with a 1-5 record for a program that had never defeated a top ten team on the road. The Cavaliers’ last Football Bowl Subdivision (FBS) win was a full year ago. Somehow, UNC is now 6-1, 3-1 in the ACC.
The 31-27 upset of the undefeated and 10th-ranked Tar Heels drops their “same old” refrain to new depths. UNC was a 23.5-point favorite, which makes the loss far worse than blowing a 17-0 lead against Georgia Tech a year ago and any in Larry Fedora’s seven seasons before he was replaced by Mack Brown.
You can count how many times Carolina has been ranked that high on two hands, so it is hard to find any defeat in their 135-year gridiron history that equates. Even considering the Heels’ mediocre and unranked five prior opponents (with Miami squeaking in at No. 25), Virginia was supposed to be their easiest game of the 2023 schedule.
The Wahoos of second-year coach Tony Elliott, who had beaten only William & Mary, looked far better prepared off their bye week — and if they hadn’t turned the ball over twice in the Carolina end zone would have won by a wider margin.
Their largely unknown quarterback Tony Muskett easily outplayed a Heisman Trophy hopeful with a 74.5 QB rating — 30 points higher than Drake Maye posted with maybe the most inconsistent game of his otherwise sterling college career. UVa out-rushed UNC 228 yards to 143, were 10-of-21 on third/fourth downs compared to Carolina’s 4-of-15, and had the ball for an astonishing 14-plus more minutes.
Twelve of Virginia’s 20 pass receptions were by receiver Malik Washington, who leads the ACC in all-purpose yards without a teammate in the top 25 of any other statistical category. So much for taking away the opposition’s best player.
So, as Brown, his coaches and players try to pick up the pieces from the crushing result, they now have to run the table to keep the “same old” adjective from being stuck to their name. That means defeating kryptonite foe Georgia Tech on the road and then beating their last three opponents (and rivals) Duke, Clemson and N.C. State for any chance to meet Florida State in the ACC championship game.
Should the Tar Heels get there, FSU is likely to be the lone top 20 ranked team they will have played this season.
Only reaching Charlotte and bringing home UNC’s first conference title in 43 years will fully erase what happened Saturday night at Kenan. Not even winning in Atlanta and beating Campbell and Duke at home for another 9-1 start will do.
So how can a bunch of young players and fine representatives of their university fully grasp the magnitude of leading 24-14 in the second half and then being outscored 17-3 by a team that was rated 105th last week by The Athletic?
Virginia linebacker James Jackson, left, celebrates with linebacker Sam Brady, right, after he intercepted a pass to seal the win for an upset victory over North Carolina in an NCAA college football game, Saturday, Oct. 21, 2023, in Chapel Hill, N.C. (AP Photo/Chris Seward)
Maye had completed nearly 70 percent of his passes coming into the game on an ideal night for football. He threw for 347 yards and two touchdowns and ran for another that gave Carolina the 10-point lead early in the third quarter.
His 24-for-48 versus Virginia must be asterisked for the half-dozen dropped balls by his receivers. But that he needed so many attempts must go back to the game plan derived by the offensive coaches who were mandated by Brown to create a more balanced attack, which they had for most of their earlier games.
Omarion Hampton, the ACC’s leading rusher, finished with 112 yards — but had an inexplicable five carries in the second half, when Carolina had too many three-and-outs and wound up relying on a sub-par Maye to bail them out. Beside the drops, the QB threw behind receivers and, uncharacteristically, missed several of them long in UNC’s lowest scoring game of the season.
“Touchdown Tez” Walker had his fourth score as a Tar Heel on a perfect throw from Maye and finished with 11 receptions. He could not reel in a late fourth-down pass in the red zone that might have led to a dramatic win. The ball was high, and Walker’s jersey was clearly being held by a Virginia defender.
Maye’s bullet to Bryson Nesbit on a 62-yard wheel route down the left sideline was the other highlight from a disjointed offense. It tied the game, and Virginia did not lead again until midway through the fourth quarter when the Cavs drove 73 yards in three minutes for their decisive score against an exhausted UNC defense.
The injury-affected kicking game had an under-40-yard punting average by back-ups to Ben Kiernan that continued giving Virginia advantageous field position around midfield. The specter of Kiernan leaning on crutches during warm-ups before the game portended that possibility. That, in turn, often left Carolina in the shadow of its own goal line due to UVa’s 50-plus average on five punts.
The UNC defense — that had been steadily improving thanks to half-time adjustments — suffered from spending so much time on the field, one reason Cedric Gray had a personal-high 18 tackles. It was an untimely backslide for Gene Chizik’s unit.
North Carolina quarterback Drake Maye (10) tries to evade Virginia defensive end Chico Bennett Jr. (15) as he looks to pass during the first half of an NCAA college football game Saturday, Oct. 21, 2023, in Chapel Hill, N.C. (AP Photo/Chris Seward)
By the second half, Virginia’s misdirection offense left the “D” out of position or too tired to contain four rugged running backs who averaged almost 5 yards a carry that controlled the ball. The ‘Hoos entered the fray running for less than 100 yards per game, 130 fewer than they rang up against their humbled hosts.
Brown said he harped on the dangers of this game all week, but to no avail.
“They played well and we didn’t,” he said. “We had played great in the third quarter and then we let ’em run right down the field. They ran it 54 times and killed the clock. The kids tried hard, hung in there. But obviously we as coaches didn’t have ’em prepared. So that’s on us.
“We played as bad on offense as we did on defense,” he later said. “We punted the ball poorly. We did not do the things we needed to do to win the game. It’s amazing it was as close as it was.
“Disappointing loss,” Brown concluded. “Happy we’re 6-1 and gotta be ready to go to Georgia Tech and try to be 7-1. We’re a good team and they’re great kids. We’ve got coaches that are down tonight and embarrassed and we’ll all fight back.”
The Tar Heels are also now fighting their own history.
Editor’s Note: A previous version of this column incorrectly said all of UNC’s opponents this season had been unranked. That has since been updated to reflect Miami’s ranking of No. 25 when UNC beat them on October 14.
Featured image via Associated Press/Chris Seward
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Miami was ranked