UNC heads for training camp with another 3-game schedule to start.

Remember how long it took the football Tar Heels to pop the balloon filled with mostly (hot) air before the 2021 season?

Mack Brown tried to tamp down all the hysteria by saying, “We are looking at the first three games, and if we don’t win them all then we didn’t live up to our expectations” or something like that. Coming off an 8-4 record and trip to the Orange Bowl during the previous COVID-interrupted season, the Tar Heels were a decided favorite to win the ACC Coastal and were in most of the top 10 predicted rankings.

Then what looked like a dangerous opener all along turned into a disaster, and Brown’s team never really recovered. With a banged-up offensive line and trying to replace four guys who were drafted by the NFL, they fell behind Virginia Tech early and never could get over the hump as 60,000-plus Hokie fans went nuts start to finish. You know the rest of the story.

This year, with Sam Howell gone, similar questions abound since Carolina blew a nine-point lead with 90 seconds to play at NC State in the regular-season finale, which flipped the expectations for both programs moving forward.

The Heels are picked to finish third in the Coastal behind heavy favorite Miami and defending ACC champion Pitt. State doesn’t get half the pub Brown’s program does but is picked a close second behind Clemson in the Atlantic Division poll.

The Wolfpack enters the season with a top 25 team and a better roster than Carolina has. And the way the dumb ACC schedule is laid out in this final year of divisions, the arch football rivals again finish the season and could possibly play eight days later in the conference championship game in Charlotte.

The Tar Heels’ first three games this fall don’t have anything to do with the ACC race, but they are curiously dangerous. They should handle Florida A&M at home on August 27, but then go to App State and Georgia State the next two weeks, games they could easily lose. And if they don’t start 3-0, whatever air that 2022 balloon holds will be leaking out before the conference schedule even gets going.

 

Featured image via Associated Press/Gerry Broome

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