UNC Football: Tar Heels routed at home by downtrodden Seminoles

The UNC football program is an utter and complete mess, evidenced by their embarrassing loss to an underachieving Florida State team.

What more can I say that I haven’t already said this season? The Tar Heels stink, and there’s really no way around it.

I’ve given them as many passes as I can — not that they’d catch them anyway — and I’d only look foolish if I continued to do so at this point. They were ill-prepared and seemingly helpless in losses to Virginia Tech and Georgia Tech in the season’s first month, and again on Saturday against a downtrodden Florida State program.

They lost two of those games by double-digits, and their season-opening seven-point loss to the Hokies was far worse than the final score would lead you to believe. They looked completely incompetent for most of the latter, not dissimilar from Saturday’s pathetic showing against a formerly 1-4 Seminoles squad that dropped four consecutive games to open the season, including a home loss to Jacksonville State.

The problems that haunted the Tar Heels in their first two losses were the same on Saturday against FSU, a common theme in their disappointing 2021 campaign that began with College Football Playoff and Heisman Trophy hopes. They don’t tackle well. They don’t block well. They don’t catch well. They don’t run well. They don’t convert third downs well. They don’t adjust well. They don’t coach well.

They play lackadaisical, undisciplined, inefficient football. And that brand of football, something we often saw during the Larry Fedora era but were convinced was gone in the “Mack is back” era, appears to be here to stay. That is, unless North Carolina quickly does something to fix the situation. Sadly, that fix probably comes at the cost of a handful of jobs within the football program.

I don’t like to call for people’s jobs, but if changes aren’t made on the defensive side of the football, at a minimum, then the Tar Heels are simply delaying the inevitable. Sure, the players have to play, and the coaches can’t go out there on the field to make tackles. Let’s face it, they’d miss the tackles, too. But the Tar Heels’ obvious struggles to stop any quarterback that slightly resembles Lamar Jackson if you drink a six-pack and squint have to be addressed. North Carolina also shows us an inability to make adjustments during any close game, and that’s squarely on the coaching. Adversity is normally a call to arms in trying to overcome a seemingly insurmountable feat, but for this UNC team it’s more like an invitation to roll over and die.

Something’s got to give at this point, and if it doesn’t, then this program is only going to go further in the wrong direction. Victories against Georgia State and Virginia, and even a rivalry win over Duke aren’t enough to not make changes when games against Miami, Notre Dame and undefeated Wake Forest loom over the next three weeks.

We should all be hoping for an early-week press conference to address changes in the UNC football program, and if that announcement never comes, even bowl eligibility seems like an unreasonable goal at this juncture.

Check back with Keeping It Heel for all the latest on the UNC football program.