UNC Tar Heels Football Team Wakes Up After a Sluggish First Half to Cruise on to Victory

by Derrick Isaiah Clyburn

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After a very unique and unprecedented off-season with no summer workouts and a limited number of practices for the North Carolina football team. Coming into this season due to the Covid-19 pandemic, the Tar Heels opened their season against the Syracuse Orange on Saturday afternoon.

On the opening drive of the game, the offense drove 65 yards down the field to score their first touchdown of the season. However, the offense struggled to get anything going for the rest of the first half with just 141 yards and 2 interceptions and a fumble on a punt return.

The defense was excellent throughout the game holding Syracuse to just 3 points in the first half and 6 points for the game. They had 7 sacks, 5 pass deflections, 1 interception, and held them to converting 21% on 3^rd downs. UNC, known for their explosive offense showed up in grand fashion at the end of the third quarter and they scored 3 touchdowns in the 4^th quarter, which led to their 31-6 victory.

UNC Game Stats

UNC Total Offense- 463 yards

Rushing 160 Passing 303

UNC Passing: Sam Howell 25-34-295yds 1TD 2 Ints

UNC Rushing: Michael Carter 7-78 yds, Javonte Williams 14-57yds 3 TD’s

UNC Receiving: Dyami Brown 6-94 yds, Michael Carter 6-60 yds, Beau Corrales 5-47 yds, Khafre Brown 3-35 yds, Dazz Newsome 2-25 yds

Syracuse Total Offense- 202 yards

Syracuse Passing: Tommy Devito 13-31-112 yds

Syracuse Rushing: Tommy Devito 16-30 yds, Jawhar Jordan 14-26 yds

Syracuse Receiving: Taj Harris 5-64 yds, Anthony Queeley 4-37 yds

UNC Bright Spots

Michael Carter rushed 7 times for 78 yards and had 6 catches for 60 yards.

Javonte Williams rushed 14 times for 57 yards and 3 TD’s

Dyami Brown had 6 catches for 94 yards.

Beau Corrales had 5 catches for 47 yards.

Chazz Surratt had 9 tackes and 2 sacks

Tomon Fox had 2 sacks.

Giovanni Biggers had 1 interception

Needs Work

Sam Howell needs to make quicker reads when he has the ball in the pocket and not throw to receivers who are covered as often

The offensive line needs to do a better job of pass protecting and identifying which man they are going to block once the ball is hiked.

The North Carolina defense had a few miss tackles and need to do a better job of cleaning that up.

The youth showed on special teams with several missed tackles in close range and blocking from behind penalties that cost UNC a punt return touchdown by Dazz Newsome.

Final Observations

The expectations going into this season for the North Carolina football team are much higher than last year. The offense and defense are very experienced as they almost brought everyone back from last year’s team. The defensive line is the one position group that is not experienced as the others.

While UNC did not play their best game on the offensive side of the ball today, there were some positives as they picked up their play in the last 20 minutes of the game. On the other side of the ball, the defense played well and gave us a glimpse of what their potential can be going forward this year.

This team has a lot of promise and should be looking to compete for one of the top spots in the conference this year. With all that said, it will be exciting to see what the ceiling for the team will be.