UNC Football: Tar Heels big favorites in Week 2 game against Georgia St

The UNC football program will look to recover from a devastating Week 1 loss to Virginia Tech when the Georgia State Panthers come to town.

After a somewhat shocking but certainly devastating week one loss to the Virginia Tech Hokies in Blacksburg on Friday, the North Carolina Tar Heels hope to regain their form against a seemingly outmatched Georgia State Panthers team.

The Tar Heels will have the marked advantage of being at home in front of a sold out crowd at Kenan Memorial Stadium on Saturday night. They’ll also be more than a week removed from the road contest that essentially ended their season — at least from a College Football Playoff perspective — so a fair amount of pressure should be off their shoulders.

But should you take the Tar Heels at the 26-point spread that WynnBet currently has them at?

I like the Tar Heels against the Panthers, and not even in a particularly close game, but do I think they come out and top the upstart Sun Belt squad by nearly four touchdowns? Honestly, no. At least, not after what I saw last week.

Now, that’s not to say that the Tar Heels aren’t a far superior team on paper, and probably on the field, too. It’s also not comparing Georgia State to a rugged Virginia Tech program playing in front of one of the best and most disruptive crowds in college football. It is, however, acknowledging the fact that the Tar Heels struggled mightily in just about every aspect of their first game of the season.

The offensive line was atrocious. A double-wide trailer could have been seen cruising through it at school zone speeds for most of the game. Sam Howell was running for his life for most of the 25 minutes that the UNC offense had the ball. Not only that, but Howell’s receivers — the ones not named Josh Downs — did a poor job catching the ball and seizing opportunities to move the chains most of the night. And although the UNC defense performed admirably for the majority of the second half, they looked lost for much of the first, and missed game-changing open field tackles throughout.

I think the Tar Heels’ ceiling is still quite high, though hopes of any kind of College Football Playoff appearance are completely out of the question. Those went down the drain as quickly as Howell’s Heisman hopes. North Carolina does still have a shot at winning a lot of games this season, and an ACC title game appearance isn’t out of the question. I do believe that we’ll see a better performance out of the Tar Heels in Week 2, and moving forward.

For right now, though, I’ll take the points

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