The man who will get most of the blame for it minced no words.
“We won’t win another game if we don’t play better than we played tonight,” Mack Brown said after his team’s almost unexplainable 21-17 loss to 21-point underdog Georgia Tech.
So many reasons underscored Brown’s proclamation, and the talking heads will spit all over themselves calling Brown, his 13th-ranked team and its star quarterback unprepared and overrated.
That’s what they’ll say after your Tar Heels built a 9-1 record by mostly living on the edge, and a 4-6 team with an interim head coach, a third-string quarterback and seemingly no reason to even stay in the game shocked the ACC Coastal Division champs who were hoping to run the table, possibly sneak into the College Football Playoff and have their freshman phenom at least get invited to the Heisman Trophy party if not stealing the award himself.
You were likely at the game, watched it on ESPN2 (which gave the stunning result even more exposure) or listened to 97.9 The Hill, so I will only rub salt in the wound with a few salient facts and stats. The Tar Heels led 17-0 until 3:13 remained in the second quarter. But that it should have been 31-0 partially explains why the Yellow Jackets did not quit, kept fighting and wound up dominating Carolina on both sides of the ball.
After Elijah Green ran 80 yards for a touchdown on Carolina’s first play from scrimmage, Brown told his offense on the sideline to “keep your foot on the gas.” Instead, the Heels went into reverse, managing only 69 more yards rushing in the first half. Combining that with, by far, Drake Maye’s worst college game allowed the Jackets to come off life support and outplay and out coach UNC for the remainder of the brisk evening at Kenan Stadium.
On offense, a team that was last in the ACC and 127th in the nation in third down conversions went 8-for-15 and kept drive after drive alive with a well-conceived running game and play-action passing strategy. That took complete advantage of Gene Chizik’s bend-don’t-break defense, which was so soft in the secondary that Tech got almost anything it wanted in the flats to complement an effective ground game.
The Tar Heels came in with a 79 percent rate of scoring touchdowns in the red zone but went 1-for 5, which was the true key to this monumental upset. Carolina settled for a short field goal, was stopped on downs at the 6-yard line, and Maye threw his fourth interception of the season to a Georgia Tech defender with no receiver anywhere near the play. That’s 21 points right there that went poof.
There were signs throughout the game that the result was coming. Brown and offensive coordinator Phil Longo tried to pull off the old double dip by scoring at the end of first half and scoring with the second half kickoff. It failed miserably because the Heels gave up the ball on their last possession with too much time on the clock and allowed the Jackets to drive 84 yards and get on the scoreboard with just over three minutes left in the half, which ended 17-7. Tech would go on to score 21 unanswered points.
North Carolina quarterback Drake Maye (10) evades Georgia Tech linebacker Charlie Thomas (1) as he runs upfield during the first half on Saturday. Maye was largely kept quiet in the second half, finishing with one of his worst stat lines of the season. (AP Photo/Chris Seward)
In never scoring again, Carolina was shut out in the second half for the first time this season, beginning with a bad four-play possession to start the third quarter. Potentially good drives stalled by self-imposed mistakes like a holding penalty that nullified a second Green long touchdown run and another flag that brought back a 68-yard pass-and-run deep into Tech territory.
The crowd had returned for the second half with little emotion like its team had played with in the first, and it wasn’t long before Georgia Tech scored a second touchdown and mounted what would be the winning drive. “You can just feel the tension,” Jones Angell said on the Tar Heel Sports Network as back-up QB Zach Gibson was on his way to 174 yards passing when he had barely 200 for the season coming into the game.
We waited for Carolina to regain control of the game, but it never happened until a last-ditch drive got the Heels in position to pull out a seventh consecutive game in the closing minutes.
“And right at the end we had a chance to win…and couldn’t do that,” Brown said, referring to Josh Downs dropping the go-ahead touchdown pass in the front corner of the end zone.
Playing banged-up for the second straight week, it would have been only Downs’ fourth catch of the night after his 46 receptions and 6 TDs over the previous four games. Fans leaped to their feet to celebrate another dramatic victory, only to gasp when Downs dropped a ball he would have caught 99 times out of 100.
Maye’s last pass to Downs was on target, but he never looked “on” in the game, completing only 16 of 30 while being sacked six times. And his bad interception led to a season-low 34.9 quarterback rating. He shouldered the blame after the game and stuck up for Downs, calling him “our best player.”
It was the kind of disappointment long-time Carolina fans have come to expect after similarly strong seasons finished the wrong way. Losing to the 89th-ranked team in the country will likely bounce the Tar Heels out of the top 20 and put them in the position of having to beat N.C. State and its strong defense the day after Thanksgiving to have any momentum going into the ACC title game against Clemson in Charlotte on December 3.
On a day when a half-dozen ranked teams lost or struggled, was it the hype over six straight wins, capturing the Coastal title and Maye’s remarkable season? Or was it Carolina merely not winning a big game that would have kept it trying to get over the proverbial hump?
Maybe both, but it happened.
Photo via AP Photo/Chris Seward.
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