UNC Football vs. Georgia State: Preview, info, prediction and more
The UNC football program will look to improve to 3-0 on the early season as they travel to take on Georgia State on Saturday afternoon.
Coming off a very eventful victory over Appalachian State, Mack Brown and the UNC football program turn their attention to yet another Sun Belt conference opponent.
For the second consecutive week, the Tar Heels will be on the road, as they’ll take on Georgia State. The Panthers kicked off their season this past Saturday, a contest which resulted in a 35-14 loss to the South Carolina Gamecocks.
With a bye week following this week’s contest, the UNC football program has aspirations of improving to 3-0 before their much-anticipated showdown with Notre Dame. However, before we worry about the Fighting Irish, there’s plenty of business to take care of in Atlanta, as the goal is to still remain unbeaten heading into a tougher part of the program’s regular season slate.
Key to Victory for North Carolina
At this point, this seems to be very repetitive, but it still is justified to be said:
The defense must figure out a way to step up.
It’s not very often that a team could win a ballgame while allowing 40, yes 40, points over the final quarter of play. As the old saying goes, “survive and advance,” is exactly what the Tar Heels did last Saturday afternoon.
Through two weeks of the season, the Tar Heels’ defense has allowed an average of 42.5 points per game. They have allowed just under 500 total yards per game, which major damage coming from both the opposing team’s passing (320 yards) and rushing (172 yards) attack.
This unit is fortunate that the offense has been brilliant so far, but they can’t expect for this to carry on. Eventually, a slugfest type of game is going to go against the Tar Heels, and it’s important that the defense figures out a way to make some stops before the offense starts to slow down.
It doesn’t benefit anyone to look ahead, but this would be a great week for the Tar Heels defensive unit to figure some things out. What would be ideal is if the defense can hold Georgia State to under 20 points, which would certainly be a step in the right direction.
Something to Watch For
Redshirt freshman Drake Maye has done a tremendous job so far leading the Tar Heels’ offense. One of the major reasons North Carolina has been so effective is Maye’s ability to spread the ball around.
In his first start, Maye connected with 10 different Tar Heels receivers. To follow that, the Tar Heels signal-caller completed passes to eight different players in the Appalachian State game, as he utilized other options with his top target, Josh Downs, being sidelined due to injury.
The UNC football program’s offensive unit has plenty of talent, as we’ve seen throughout the first two weeks of the season. Will we continue to see this trend where everyone plays a role, or will Maye start to rely on a lesser number of players to target moving forward?
Injury Report
On Monday, Brown provided some key injury updates for three of the Tar Heels’ main contributors.
As our own Mark DeMott noted in this post, the aforementioned Downs, along with Spencer Rolland and Caleb Hood, will be monitored throughout the week and will be game-time decisions.
Don’t expect any decisions to be made until close to game time, but these injury updates are definitely ones to keep an eye on as we close in on kickoff.
What You Need to Know
WHAT? North Carolina Tar Heels (2-0, 0-0 in ACC) vs. Georgia State (0-1, 0-0 Sun Belt)
WHEN? Saturday, September 10, 2022 at noon EST
WHERE? Center Parc Stadium in Atlanta, Georgia
TV? ESPNU
RADIO? Tar Heels Sports Network
WEATHER? Partly cloudy, high of 77 degrees
LINE? UNC -7.5
LAST MEETING? UNC defeated Georgia State 59-17 on September 11, 2021, in Chapel Hill
ALL-TIME SERIES? UNC leads 1-0
PREDICTION? UNC 42, Georgia State 17