UNC Football’s disappointing performance leads to Georgia Tech loss
You can kiss the UNC football program’s College Football Playoff hopes goodbye, as the Tar Heels suffered an unacceptable loss to unranked Georgia Tech.
In a matter of just one night, the UNC football program completely took itself out of the College Football Playoff picture.
Although it was a long shot for them to make it in the first place, the Tar Heels needed to win out in order to make the strongest case possible. However, after the hype began to build up after clinching the ACC Coastal Division last week, the Tar Heels came out and put together an absolute terrible performance at home against Georgia Tech.
The game started out well for the Tar Heels but went south from there. After a defensive stop to begin the contest, Elijah Green got North Carolina on the board with an 80-yard run on the team’s first play from scrimmage.
From there, the UNC football program had opportunities in the red zone but did miss out on some great opportunities.
Leading 17-0 late in the first half, the defense collapsed, allowing Georgia Tech to drive right down the field for the score. It was one of those plays that made you feel as if the momentum was going to shift, and it most certainly did in the second half.
Relying on their third and fourth-string quarterback, the Yellow Jackets put up 21 unanswered points en route to their upset victory over North Carolina. Coming into the game, the Tar Heels were favored to win this game by 21, as no one expected the ACC Coastal Division champs would come out and play so poorly.
The offense was completely out of sync. Drake Maye essentially took himself out of the Heisman Trophy race with a sub-par performance. Josh Downs was invisible throughout and made arguably the biggest blunder of the game when he dropped a wide-open pass in the end zone, a score that would’ve given the Tar Heels the lead.
North Carolina lost the battle up front on both sides of the ball. Maye was sacked six times, four by Keion White who was an absolute matchup nightmare for the Tar Heels’ offensive line.
To correlate with the offensive line struggles, the Tar Heels couldn’t get much going in the run game. Green, who had 80 yards on his first carry, rushed 9 more times for a grand total of 12 yards.
You can go on and on about how disappointing the performance was, and you can easily make the case that this is one of the worst losses the UNC football program has had under Mack Brown.
The Tar Heels have played with fire all year, and for the most part, have been able to survive. In this one, they were unable to get by, as Georgia Tech came in with nothing to lose and looked to make a statement to help turn their season around.
Overall, it was a bad night for the UNC football program, as you hope it doesn’t continue on into the final week of the regular season. It is very important that the Tar Heels come out and play better against NC State, as it will be a long night if they show up to Charlotte on December 3 and play the way they did against the Yellow Jackets.
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