Carolina football is crashing the early ranking parties.
Besides being in every top twenty pre-season poll for 2021, Mack Brown’s Tar Heels are showing up in some other unprecedented places, such as most likely to crash the College Football Playoff and most-likely top quarterback and Heisman Trophy candidates.
Tell me: where and when have you ever seen that kind of pub for a UNC football team? Of course, that brings pressure to produce. And it is not easy to see where that burden comes from.
Take the CFP race, which is football’s Final Four. ESPN listed the Tar Heels among the most likely never-haves to get into the playoff, and it circles the game on the schedule that we have already circled.
The conversation goes like this among Tar Heel fans. If we are really for real, Carolina will be 7-0 heading into the October 30 game in South Bend against Notre Dame. Not to diminish the first seven games, but playoff-bound teams should have no problems at Virginia Tech, Georgia State and Virginia at home; Georgia Tech at Mercedes Benz Stadium; Duke, Florida State and Miami at home.
All those ACC games are potential losses, of course, but Brown’s team will be solid favorites in every one of them. Can you imagine the build-up going to South Bend undefeated with a week off to prepare?
The same for Sam Howell, who is listed as either the No. 1 returning quarterback or No. 2 behind Oklahoma’s Spencer Rattler, who is coming off a first year with more than 3,000 yards passing and 28 TD tosses.
Howell’s challenge is twofold. He cannot sneak up on any opponent after sterling freshman and sophomore seasons. Plus, some of the weapons that he had in 2019 and 2020 are gone, including Dazz Newsome and Dyami Brown and two 1,000-yard running backs who kept defenses honest. So in order for the Tar Heels to stay in the team and quarterback conversations throughout 2021, new stars will have to emerge.
But isn’t it nice to be in those discussions for the first time in a long time, if ever.
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