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UNC’s offense sputters once again in 34-9 loss to UCF

After putting away two opponents in a row, UNC will go into their bye week with a 2-2 record thanks to a frustrating loss to UCF. The Heels now have a couple of weeks to figure out how to straighten a number of things out before they take on a struggling Clemson team in Chapel Hill.

Things seemed a bit hopeful when this game started -- UNC forced UCF into a fourth and one situation, but from there they continued to move the ball down the field. Thirteen plays later and the Knights found the end zone. When UNC got the ball on offense, they gave the ball back to the Knights via a tipped pass thrown by Gio Lopez that resulted in an interception. The Heels defense managed to keep UCF from finding he end zone again, fortunately, but the Knights were able to put three more points on the board before returning the ball to UNC.

To speed things up here, here is a quick synopsis of every offensive drive for the rest of the half: punt, interception, field goal, and one more negative play to go into halftime down by 17. Meanwhile, UCF did a great job wearing down UNC’s defense in order to put 10 more points on the board. It started to feel like the defense would have nothing left by the time the game was over because the offense kept sending them back onto the field with their missteps. That ended up eventually being true. We’ll get to that in a moment.

While the Heels opened the third quarter with a quick three-and-out, they made a bit more progress on the following drive. Things took a turn, though, when Gio Lopez was injured on a designed run play on fourth down. Max Johnson entered the game and took things over, and he helped finish the 19-play drive by throwing a touchdown to Kobe Paysour. It was just the spark that the Heels needed, but the drive took so long that the Knights got the ball back with barely any time left in the third. Unfortunately, UCF returned the favor in the fourth quarter -- following a UNC punt, UCF drained an outrageous amount of the clock before eventually scoring a touchdown with 1:54 left in the game.

For anybody looking for some positives from this game, just know that they are few and far between. There were moments when UNC’s defense looked decent, but they still gave up 34 points. Demon June had a few productive moments, but he wasn’t able to gain more than 50 yards off 10 carries. Gio Lopez and Max Johnson completed the same amount of passes, but Lopez was more efficient despite two interceptions. It’s also worth noting that between the two quarterbacks, they threw for a total of 154 yards, which isn’t going to get the job done against ACC opponents.

To give credit where it is due, both TCU and UCF have quality football programs that just seem to be better than Carolina in almost every way. However, the problem is that even in their wins, UNC hasn’t looked as good as anybody would have hoped for, even for a rebuild team. Bill Belichick will have to do the Lord’s work on this team during the bye week if they want any chance to finish the season with a respectable record. It’s hard to think of any facet of this team that doesn’t need a decent amount of work, and yes, that includes the defense as well. Two games without allowing touchdowns is all fun and games until you get punched in the face by yet another Big 12 team.

Another big question going into the bye week is what the status of Gio Lopez is. He was eventually carted off the field after his injury, and as of right now we haven’t heard anything from reporters about his condition. Hopefully he is okay, because regardless of how good or bad he was doing, the Heels cannot afford to be down a quarterback.

Overall, this was yet another frustrating performance that fans get to stew about for the next two weeks. It isn’t fair to Bill Belichick to cast full-throated judgement on his hiring after four games, but all I will say is that things don’t look so great so far. Let’s hope this bye week is productive, because the only thing worse than losing to Clemson is losing to a bad version of Clemson.