UNC Football: Grading The Tar Heels Week Three Performance

The UNC Football program beat the Minnesota Golden Gophers in Week Three, 31-13. How well did the Tar Heels grade on each side of the ball?

In the first-ever matchup between the UNC Football program and the Minnesota Golden Gophers, the Tar Heels came out victorious, 31-13. How did the Tar Heels accomplish this, and what grade did they receive for their performance on Saturday?

Offense

This could have very easily been an ‘A’ grade for a team that scored 31 points on Saturday and, in the second half, for the most part, made it look easy.  However, the lack of the ability to establish a running game and finding out that Drake Maye isn’t, in fact, Superman made this a B grade.

After averaging 4.3 yards per carry against South Carolina and 6.9 yards per carry against Appalachian State, the UNC football offense was only able to muster 2.8 yards per carry against the Gophers. Obviously, this is partially credited to Minnesota’s defensive game plan, which was to take away the run game, something we didn’t see the Mountaineers do last week.

Something that will be discussed further is what defenses will do to stop North Carolina’s high-powered offense, averaging 34 points per game and 494 yards per game. The Tar Heels showed on Saturday that teams will have to choose going forward: stop the run or stop the pass, but stopping both will be very difficult. While the run game never seemed to be established until the fourth quarter after the game was in hand, the passing game seemed to have plenty of open receivers.

The one thing we didn’t expect to see was two interceptions from Maye. Neither interception was something we wanted to see, but both are mainly credited to Maye trying to be a playmaker in a situation where simply throwing the ball away would have been fine. We must consider that the Minnesota defense allowed only 223.5 yards per game coming into the game, and the Tar Heels put up 519 yards on the Gophers. The run game and Maye’s early decision-making led us to the final grade.

Grade: B+

Defense

On the surface, this might have appeared to be one of, if not the best, defensive performance in the Gene Chizik era. While they made some great plays and held the Minnesota offense to just 13 points, their lowest total since holding Virginia Tech to 10 points in 2022, some of that is a lack of offense from the Gophers.

Nothing against Minnesota, but the quarterback play was subpar, to say the least. There was an open receiver several times, and the pass was just inaccurate. Passing isn’t Minnesota’s style of play, as they like to focus heavily on the run game, but North Carolina forced the Gophers into becoming more one-dimensional by getting out in front early. However, unlike in the past, it seemed the Tar Heel defense could come up with stops and took on a “bend, but don’t break” mentality, especially following the two Maye interceptions. Only allowing three points off two Tar Heel turnovers is important going forward, knowing that the defense can back up the offense when they don’t come away with points.

Creating pressure upfront seemed to come back to life this week for the UNC Football defense after disappearing against Appalachian State in week two. While the Gophers quarterback play wasn’t great, some of the mistakes can be attributed to the pressure from the defensive front seven. Being able to capitalize on those mistakes and turn them into turnovers is something we’ve not seen much of from the defense in the past.

The “worst” drive of the game came right before the end of the first half when the secondary committed two blatant pass interference penalties, one on third down that would’ve held Minnesota to three points, instead of allowing the Gophers only touchdown of the game. Both of these could have been avoided by just turning and looking for the football, something the defensive backs have improved upon this year, but they still have a long way to go.

Building on this performance going forward will be important as they will face much better quarterbacks and balanced offenses than what they saw on Saturday.

Grade: B+

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