For the millions of people who tuned in to see the Tar Heels get smoked by TCU in Week 1, a pair of decisive wins against an FCS team (Richmond) and a team which probably should be in the FCS (Charlotte) are not going to change many minds.
Carolina did what it had to do against the Spiders and 49ers, in effect covering the two “free spaces” on its 2025 bingo card. The remaining nine games of the regular season are all against teams from power conferences, starting with a visit to UCF out of the Big 12 next weekend.
Tar Heel fans all remember what happened the last time UNC played a Big 12 opponent. The players do too, and while they say they’ve flushed the bad vibes of the Monday Night Massacre down the drain, the sting still lingers.
“We felt that in Week 1, and we’ve moved on from it,” said linebacker Mikay Gbayor. “But we never forget that feeling, and we don’t want to go back to it.”
The Tar Heels claim they weren’t bought in to the unbelievable amount of hype surrounding the program during the preseason, but it’s hard not to see the TCU game as a little bit of a, shall we say, “mess around and find out” moment. Expectations were reset, people tuned out, and Carolina football, for the next two weeks, went back to just being Carolina football.
In a way, according to quarterback Gio Lopez, the thrashing at the hands (and horns) of the Frogs may work out for the better in the long run.
“I hate the term ‘We needed that.’ You don’t want to get killed on live television,” Lopez said Saturday. “But it was a wake-up call that we have a lot more we have to do better. Lock in on practice, take every day and make the most of it.”
“These were two good wins back-to-back, but let’s not forget what happened when we let our guard down,” said receiver Jordan Shipp, who caught two touchdown passes from Lopez against the Spiders. “I feel like it’s good that we had that and we had it early. You’d rather get the brakes beaten off you early than late in the season. Now we can get that confidence going and just keep going up and up every week.”
UNC will see just how much progress it’s made when it returns to, as Art Chansky put it, “big boy football” this coming weekend. UCF, like everybody else, saw what TCU did to the Tar Heels two weeks ago. And in college football, imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. The Knights won’t hold anything back.
But neither will the Tar Heels. With the shine of “Chapel Bill” at least partially gone from the program, Carolina can just go out and play football like it’s used to doing. Gbayor, who played his best game as a Tar Heel in the win against Richmond, said the team’s collective looseness is easy to see.
“It was a mentality shift in that locker room,” he said. “Guys were just like, ‘We’ve gotta buckle up. We’ve just gotta go out there and just have fun and play and not be tense.’ I feel like a lot of guys were a little too tense, and it just led to one thing after another. Guys went out there, cut loose these last two weeks, and you see the results.”
The results may be better, but until Carolina is able to run with a team which carries weight nationally, the outside opinions won’t change. Don’t take it from me; take it from the sportsbooks, which list UNC as a decisive underdog in Orlando this weekend. Playtime is over.
Featured image via Chris Seward
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