For Duke, this is the wrong time to play Carolina. Promise.
The Tar Heels playing at home as an 18-point favorite, in most years, might be a trap game. But, by now we know, this isn’t most years.
Coming off a 23-point embarrassment at Georgia Tech – which included the Yellow Jackets scoring 27 straight points – should provide enough motivation for Carolina to bounce back with its best performance of the season, which Mack Brown would describe as “playing well on both sides of the ball for an entire game.”
The Heels might have some injury inconsistency on the offensive line and certainly some depth problems on defense, but they are way better than they showed in Atlanta. Somewhere between the second halves at Virginia Tech and at home against Virginia.
Brown has beaten the Blue Devils 10 straight since the famous “scoreboard game” in 1989, when some UNC knucklehead didn’t turn off the electric scoreboard (41-0) in the southeast corner of Kenan before all the Duke players ran down en masse and posed for a picture.
Brown said he and Steve Spurrier, the Devils’ coach back then, have joked about it a few times over the years, but it was after all Duke’s best team under the Old Ball Coach before he departed for Florida and the second of Brown’s two 1-10 seasons.
When Mack returned to the Hill, Carolina had lost three straight to Duke and NC State, and his Heels haven’t lost to either since then. That first streak won’t end this year, I can happily guarantee.
The game plan will be to stop Duke’s running game and Mateo Durant, the second-leading rusher in the ACC with 131 yards per game and tied for the most touchdowns with 8. Senior quarterback Gunnar Holmberg has completed 72 percent of his passes (almost 10 points better than Sam Howell), but Gunnar is not going to shoot you down.
Frankly, after losing at Charlotte and beating bad NC A&T, Northwestern and Kansas at home, the Blue Devils won’t know what hit them. The Heels are mad, borderline humiliated and coming off a good week of practice. The Victory Bell and Bell Tower stay light blue.
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