Less than a month removed from being ranked among the top five college football teams in America, the Tar Heels now find themselves unranked and looking for redemption.
Standing in their way this weekend in Durham is a Duke team looking for revenge of its own after the Tar Heels won last year’s game on a late interception by Chazz Surratt.
Last season’s win for UNC returned the Victory Bell to Chapel Hill following what had been a three-year losing streak to the Blue Devils, the first time that had happened since the late 1980’s when Hall-of-Famer Steve Spurrier was the head coach in Durham.
The Tar Heels brought in Mack Brown as head coach to help reverse that trend, and have now done it again nearly 30 years later.
Duke has found success over the last decade under current head coach David Cutcliffe, which has helped restore the intensity to what Cutcliffe referred to as the “Grocery Store Rivalry” due to the close proximity of the two fanbases. So far this season, though, the Blue Devils have gone just 2-5 despite having quality talent on both sides of the ball.
The Tar Heels have fared better with a 4-2 record to this point, but have fallen short of expectations with disappointing road losses at Florida State and Virginia. Having entered each of those games as heavy favorites, Brown told reporters this week that there’s plenty of reasons UNC should be worried about a similar outcome happening against Duke.
“Duke’s got a really good run game, we haven’t stopped the run well,” Brown said. “They’ve got very good special teams, we haven’t been very good, we haven’t been consistent. Their front seven is really good. The two ends are as good as we’ll play and the secondary is much improved over last year.
“Their team, to me, is very much like a situation we had with Virginia and Florida State,” he continued. “They’re better teams than their record. And if Duke hadn’t turned the ball over so many times, their record would be much, much better.”
Among the areas where both Florida State and Virginia found great success against the Tar Heels was getting pressure on quarterback Sam Howell.
Virginia linebacker Charles Snowden racked up four sacks by himself last weekend, which is a problem considering Duke defensive ends Victor Dimukeje and Chris Rumph II are tied for the ACC lead at 7.5 sacks apiece this season.
Then there’s the glaring issue UNC has with its inconsistent run defense. In the win over NC State, the Tar Heels allowed just 34 yards on the ground. In the two losses, UNC has given up an average of 226 on the ground.
Senior linebacker Tomon Fox said the Tar Heels are taking it upon themselves to get that issue corrected.
“I think our defense as a whole just has to be more consistent from a week-to-week basis,” Fox said. “We have a good enough plan. We have good enough players. We just have to go out there and execute. In order to be a great defense, we have to get better each week. We can’t have these up and downs like a roller coaster.”
Despite the recent struggles on defense and special teams, UNC has found comfort in boasting one of the most explosive offenses in the country. The Tar Heels can score with anybody and have shown they have the ability to make up large deficits in small amounts of time.
Problems in other areas have proven UNC doesn’t belong in the top five, but Brown said that he sees only a handful of teams in the country worthy of that honor—with a group of 25 to 30 other schools shifting in the rankings from week to week.
How UNC responds to the challenge on Saturday in a rivalry setting could go a long way when it comes to rejoining the top 25 for the rest of the season.
“I’m excited about this team moving forward,” Brown said. “They’re resilient. They’re tough. They’ve handled this COVID stuff incredibly. We’ve had a lot of kids that have made a mistake in the game–and it really hurt us–and they keep fighting back and do it with tremendous pride. We’re about to be really good. I don’t know when it is, but I’m excited about the future of this team.”
Photo via Dakota Moyer
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