It appears the honeymoon period of head coach Mack Brown’s second stint in Chapel Hill is over. Frustrations over the UNC football team’s 2021 season hit a new boiling point in a 35-25 home loss to previously 1-4 Florida State Saturday afternoon. One of the Seminoles’ four losses this season was to Jacksonville State, an FCS program. Carolina entered as 17.5 point favorites. Brown is now 0-11 in his career against Florida State, his alma mater.
“I want to congratulate Florida State,” Brown told reporters. “They played a near-perfect game. We had to stop the two tailbacks and stop the quarterback, and we did none of the three.”
As with UNC’s loss to Georgia Tech in Week 4, the second quarter proved to be the turning point. Carolina entered the quarter up 10-0 on the strength of a Josh Downs touchdown catch from Sam Howell. When the clock hit zero, they trailed 21-10.
Florida State quarterback Jordan Travis, who starred in the Seminoles’ 2020 victory over the Tar Heels, accounted for all three of their scores in the quarter, including a 53-yard touchdown run and a 32-yard touchdown pass. The Tar Heels have now been outscored 69-30 in second quarters this season.
“[Travis] is hard to tackle,” Brown said. “He’s fast. He’s slippery; we were back [in the pocket] a lot and couldn’t get to him. But the thing he has not done well is been a consistent thrower. And he didn’t miss. Now, some of them were screens, but still the two or three deep balls that he hit were a difference in the ballgame… You can’t allow them to run the ball, and you can’t allow the quarterback to be confident and have success, and we allowed all three.”
Carolina showed signs of life early in the third quarter, stopping the Seminoles on their first possession, and then finding the end zone themselves. Howell tossed a 21-yard touchdown pass to tight end Kamari Morales to close the deficit to 21-17. It was Morales’ fourth straight game with a touchdown pass from Howell.
But Florida State answered in a flash, piecing together a 5-play, 75-yard drive in less than two minutes to suck the life out of Kenan Stadium again. Travis finished the drive off with a 1-yard quarterback sneak to push Florida State’s lead back to 11 points.
A dropped pass from a wide open Khafre Brown on UNC’s next possession was just one in a series of Carolina mistakes throughout the game. The Tar Heels committed 12 penalties for 110 yards, including two unsportsmanlike conduct fouls.
“You just can’t do that stuff,” Brown said. “That’s not who we are. That’s not what we’re going to put up with, not what we’re going to be known for, and we’ve gotta wake up. We’ve gotta go back to work and be positive, and do positive things. And [we] can’t get frustrated when things aren’t going well. [When] people are beating you, you’ve gotta fight to beat them back. But you can’t do it illegally. You’ve gotta play within the rules.”
After the Seminoles extended the lead to 35-17, Carolina drove all the way to the Florida State 5-yard line. Facing a fourth and goal, the Tar Heels elected to keep the offense on the field, instead of kicking a short field goal which would have cut the deficit to two possessions. The try failed, and any hope of a Carolina comeback victory fluttered out of Kenan Stadium.
“You look at analytics, and we were down by a bunch,” Brown said. “So we needed to score a touchdown. We could’ve kicked the field goal, but we were getting short on time… we thought we’d made it. If we’d made it and gone for two, you’d have been all excited about the decision.”
Now 3-3 after six games, Carolina faces a week of soul-searching before the Miami Hurricanes come to town next Saturday. After an offseason filled with dreams of a College Football Playoff Appearance, a loss to the 1-4 Seminoles feels like the bottom of the barrel for Carolina fans. But the nature of college football means there’s little time to feel sorry for one’s self. There are still games to play.
Up Next
UNC hosts Miami in Kenan Stadium on Saturday, October 16 at 3:30 p.m.
Game Notes
- Josh Downs caught a touchdown pass in his seventh straight game for Carolina, going back to last season’s Orange Bowl.
- UNC is now 3-17-1 all-time against Florida State.
- This is just the fifth home loss in Mack Brown’s second stint as head coach. The others came to Clemson, Notre Dame, Virginia and Appalachian State.
- Carolina has lost three games as the betting favorite this season.
Featured image via The News & Observer
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