After two consecutive home wins, the UNC football team is on the road for the second time this season, visiting Georgia Tech in Atlanta Saturday night.
Carolina won at Georgia Tech in 2019 by a 38-22 score, but according to historical records, and head coach Mack Brown, that result is more of an outlier than a trend.
“Not only are we 5-6 on the road [in the last three seasons], and all the games have been really close… two of them overtime games that we lost, our record at UNC in Atlanta is 9-19,” Brown told reporters Wednesday. “So, it hasn’t been an easy thing for us to win in Atlanta, for sure.”
2020 marked the first year the Tar Heels and Yellow Jackets have not met in football since 1979. The 2019 game came in Georgia Tech head coach Geoff Collins’ first season with the team. In the two years since that meeting, Brown said Georgia Tech has improved. After the Yellow Jackets’ season-opening loss to Northern Illinois, they took perennial ACC powerhouse Clemson down to the wire last weekend, losing 14-8 on a goal-line stand.
“You start looking at their Clemson game, they had a chance to win,” Brown said. “And we know how Clemson’s dominated this league for many, many years. So, [Georgia Tech has] improved so much since that opening ballgame. And their defense can really run. They’ve got some depth. They were all over Clemson’s offense.”
Georgia Tech’s offense is also turning heads as well. One of two quarterbacks for the Yellow Jackets is Jordan Yates. Jordan is the nephew of former UNC quarterback T.J. Yates, who currently holds the Carolina record for most career passing yards. Defensive coordinator Jay Bateman said Yates is just one of a number of dangerous weapons on the Georgia Tech offense.
“Yates is a kid, we looked at him in recruiting,” Bateman said. “The guy won a state championship. He’s just a winner. Runs around, makes plays, competes his tail off. I think they’ve got really good skill at running back, they’ve got two really athletic quarterbacks, and I think where they’ve made the biggest improvement is [offensive] line.”
The road trip is particularly exciting for star wide receiver Josh Downs. Downs is from Suwanee, Georgia and went to North Gwinnett High School, just outside Atlanta. The sophomore has scored touchdowns in all three Carolina games this season, and said he’ll have a large contingent of fans in Atlanta’s 71,000-seat Mercedes-Benz Stadium Saturday night hoping to see more.
“As a kid, [I was] always around there, watching the Falcons play, even though [Mercedes-Benz Stadium] is new, I was in the old [Georgia] Dome,” Downs said. “But I’ve been to this new one, I played in there when I was in high school. So it’s gonna be fun. A bunch of my friends have already texted me about it, saying they’re ready to see me play. My family’s gonna be there, I’ve got family in Columbus, Georgia, and I’ve got family in greater Atlanta, Georgia. So, I’m very excited to go back home.”
The stadium is the largest venue Carolina will have played in so far this season, and the only one with a retractable roof.
Brown said rather than being intimidated by the massive facility, he and his team are eager for the opportunity.
“I think [the players] will be excited about playing in Mercedes-Benz Stadium,” he said. “And one of the staff members, I won’t say which one, said ‘Are you worried about the weather this weekend? It looks bad.’ And I said, ‘No, I’ve got it, man. It’s 72 degrees with one mile an hour wind, and I even know which way the wind’s blowing!”
To snag a road win Saturday night, Carolina’s defense will have to improve on its performance against Virginia, where it gave up 39 points and almost 600 passing yards. And with the season’s opening loss to Virginia Tech, any ACC loss all but slams the door on UNC’s conference championship ambitions.
Featured image via The Daily Tar Heel
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