Last Saturday, the Tar Heels won their fourth straight game against the Miami Hurricanes. This Saturday, they’ll look to make it four straight against another opponent: their arch-rivals from Durham.
Carolina has had its way with the Duke Blue Devils since head coach Mack Brown’s return to Chapel Hill in 2019. But like Miami, Duke will trot out a new head coach to face the Hall of Famer Brown. Mike Elko is in the first year of his first-ever head coaching job, taking over for the recently-retired David Cutcliffe. And through the first half of the season, Elko has already surpassed Duke’s win total from 2021.
“This’ll be an exciting week. Duke week always is,” Brown said Monday. “Mike Elko knows this game. He coached at Wake Forest for [head coach] Dave Clawson for a long time. He did an outstanding job at Notre Dame and at Texas A&M. He’s one of the best defensive coordinators in the country. They’re doing a great job.”
The Tar Heels have faced an Elko-led defense before in the Mack Brown Era 2.0. Elko’s Texas A&M team defeated Carolina in the 2020 Orange Bowl, though UNC did score 27 points in the game. Offensive coordinator Phil Longo said Duke’s defense shares several qualities with that Aggie team.
“Their defense is very similar,” Longo said. “The talent base is different. They have different strengths in different positions than they had at A&M. But as cliché as it sounds, it is a very, very well-coached defense. Duke is not out of position a lot.”
Carolina’s defense, meanwhile, has been the talk of the program in the past two weeks. In the wins against Virginia Tech and Miami, the Tar Heels gave up just 34 combined points, including just a single touchdown in the two second halves. By comparison, the team had given up 73 combined points in the previous two games.
The run defense in particular has stood out for all the right reasons. After allowing App State, Georgia State and Notre Dame to rush for more than 230 yards each, the Tar Heels held both the Hokies and the Hurricanes to fewer than 100 yards. Brown said he hopes the improved performance starts a domino effect along the rest of the defense.
“At Appalachian, we didn’t do anything right,” he said. “We played OK for two quarters. But they ran for 288 and threw for 1,000, and there’s 40 points in a quarter and too many penalties; it was just all over the place. So, I really feel like when you get so you’re doing something good, and we have stopped the run really well the last two weeks, that gives you a chance to get better at the rest of it.”
That defense will take on a Duke offense rushing for nearly 200 yards per game through the first half of the season. Three Blue Devils have scored four touchdowns on the ground, including quarterback Riley Leonard. UNC defensive coach Gene Chizik, who coached in the rivalry in 2015 and 2016, said Duke has the tools to challenge the Tar Heels.
“This is a different Duke team than people have seen before,” Chizik said. “Now, I haven’t been here and I haven’t watched them in the last several years, but this is a very good football team. They’re physical, they’re very well-coached, speaking from the offensive side. They’ve got some talented players at positions that matter.”
One good defensive performance is one thing. Two in a row could be considered a coincidence. But three in a row — which is what Brown said he is hoping to see Saturday night — could be seen as a promising trend for the once-beleaguered unit.
“Defensively, we’ve been catching up,” Brown said. “We’ve got a lot of young guys that are playing, and they are getting better and they are getting more confident. But we’ve got to get so we consistently play great defense to have the program we want. We can’t outscore people all the time. Hopefully, after the last two weeks, we’re headed in that direction.”
Featured image via UNC Athletic Communications/Jeffrey A. Camarati
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