What happens if Carolina loses its opening game at Virginia Tech?
Mack Brown spoke at the ACC Kickoff this week and verbally circled September 3 as the most important game of the upcoming season. Yes, it’s the opener in very-tough-to-play Blacksburg, but it also has the potential to be the buzz-kill of all time. Or does it?
The Tar Heels know the amped-up Hokies are always a brutal opponent especially at Lane Stadium. Beyond that they don’t know what to expect, although Brown is warning them the first of many “best shots” is coming to his team that lost tons of offense.
If Carolina loses, some air will come out of the balloon, but if you have to lose a game maybe the opener is where to lose it. After all, you still have 11 games to try to make up for it. And when the regular season ends, it is who’s in the ACC title game that counts.
UNC has lost six of the last eight games at VaTech, the last a six-overtime thriller that the Heels had ample opportunities to win. Now with basically the same offensive line and a Heisman candidate quarterback, what about very young backs and wide receivers?
Brown acknowledges his program has become a “media darling” in his second tour of Chapel Hill. “Now we have to shut up and prove we’re good. So let’s go play,” he said.
Should Carolina come home on the short end of the score, the publicity they face will have dropped to the bottom of the elevator shaft. Sure, they can take it out on Georgia State in week two, but Virginia comes in the following Saturday trying to beat UNC a fifth consecutive time and third straight in Kenan Stadium.
Ty Chandler, the grad transfer from Tennessee, is the only back who has any experience being hit by big-time college defenders, and Chandler seems more of an inside-outside back than the bulldozing firm of Javonte and Carter.
Admitting Carolina’s expectations could take a serious hit in early September, Brown says, “We have a three-game season. Don’t talk to me about nationally until after three games and we haven’t lost any of them.”
The Heels have been near the mountaintop before in football, 1980 and ’96 come to mind, when derailed late. If it happens in Week 1 of ’21, they can still recover. Let’s all breathe and remember that.
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