Together, let’s remember UNC’s last visit to Notre Dame.
In 2014, the Tar Heels had to have the weirdest season in the 90-plus years they’ve been playing football, giving up the most points in school history and still making it to a bowl game.
Opponents rang up a record high of 507 points, an average of 39 per game. East Carolina beat Larry Fedora’s Tar Heels 70-41 in Greenville to begin what looked like a season-demolishing four-game losing streak. The next week, Clemson scored 50 in Death Valley, followed by Virginia Tech tallying “only” 34 in a win at Kenan Stadium.
For some reason, Fedora felt good about the October 11 trip to South Bend where the undefeated and sixth-ranked Fighting Irish waited. And sure enough, the Tar Heels gave them a helluva game and almost won before Notre Dame prevailed 50-43.
After Carolina broke out to a 14-0 lead, the Irish rallied to go ahead at the half, 28-26. The Heels scored with 80 seconds left in the second quarter on a 20-yard pass from Marquise Williams to Quinshad Davis but failed on the two-point conversion to tie the game.
UNC led one more time late in the third period on a 23-yard reverse pass from Davis to Williams. Nick Weiler’s PAT made it 36-35 before two ND touchdowns pulled out the win in the fourth quarter.
His record fell to 2-4 and Fedora said, “I just left a team whose guts are ripped out of them right now. They came here believing they could win a football game, and they came up short.”
The heart-breaker spurred Carolina on to win four of its next five, capped by a 45-20 crushing of Duke in Durham.
After giving up 35 points at home to N.C. State and 40 to Rutgers in the Quick Lane Bowl to finish 6-7, Fedora fired most of his defensive coaching staff. He hired as his new D-coordinator Gene Chizik, who had led Auburn to the 2010 BCS national championship behind Heisman Trophy winner Cam Newton but left the Plains in Dutch with the NCAA, which UNC already was over the academic scandal.
“I have to give Larry some help on defense,” athletic director Bubba Cunningham explained. The 2015 Tar Heels gave up 164 fewer points in winning the ACC Coastal Division and going 11-3, a turnaround you might say began at Notre Dame the year before.
Photo via Matt Cashore/USA TODAY Sports.
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