Marcus Freeman takes his charges to Tobacco Road to face the Tar Heels tomorrow in what has emerged as a surprisingly pivotal matchup for the first-year head coach. Come-from-ahead losses in his first two games at the helm of the program, a shocking loss to a theoretically overmatched opponent in his home opener, and a shaky win against a so-so opponent the next week have made the positive offseason vibes around Freeman feel like a distant memory. A season-ending injury to quarterback Tyler Buchner in game two, a balky foot for preseason All-American offensive lineman Jarrett Patterson, a targeting suspension for middle linebacker JD Bertrand that will keep him out of the first half of this game, a defense that somehow hasn’t generated a turnover in three consecutive games (a cold spell unseen by Irish fans since at least 2008) after having two taken off the board in the final minute last week; Freeman has caught precious few breaks in the early going. If ever there was a time to catch one, that time is now.

On the flip side, the Tar Heels have started off year four of the second Mack Brown era with three straight wins and have designs on (stop us if you’ve heard this one) making a run at the ACC title this year. Many of the same questions that have dogged Brown since the end of his Texas days are still attached to the Heels now though. His recruiting operation is just as strong as it ever was, with North Carolina able to boast a very respectable number of recruiting stars on its roster; on-field production, however, has been marred by mental breakdowns, gameday coaching mistakes, and the dreaded S word being used in some corners to describe the culture. (“Soft.” The word is “soft.” Get your mind out of the gutter.)

When Brown was hired he brought in Army defensive coordinator Jay Bateman, who had done some great things at West Point, to the same position in Chapel Hill. Results were sub-optimal, however, and Brown parted ways with Bateman last season. His new DC? Um, good question. He brought in Charlton Warren, who had one mostly forgettable year heading Indiana’s defense, as co-defensive coordinator and promoted (I think?) assistant DC Tommy Thigpen to co-DC. But wait! There’s more! For… reasons, presumably, Brown also brought in, and I swear I’m not making this up, Gene Chizik as Associate Head Coach – Defense. What does it all mean? Well, nothing much good so far, as Carolina’s defensive woes have continued.

This game could very well hinge on matchup of the resistible force of the Irish offense against the movable object of the Tar Heels defense.

Notre Dame (+1.5) at North Carolina

Kenan Stadium
Chapel Hill, NC
Date: Saturday, September 23rd, 2022
Time: 3:30 PM ET
TV: ABC

As noted, North Carolina had a little bit of preseason hype thanks to some key returning pieces, those nice recruiting results, and a sense that maybe the ACC is a little more up for grabs than it has been in recent years with Clemson showing some cracks. They’re 3-0, which is better than not being 3-0, but there are some major questions marks about them still.

  • In their season opener, they faced FCS Florida A&M – a team down 25 players (not a typo) due to eligibility issues, including 2021 FCS sack leader Isaiah Land and half its offensive line depth chart. Carolina won 56-24, but the game was 35-24 at the end of the third quarter when the Rattlers finally ran out of gas. They went on to lose to Jackson State 59-3 and beat Division II Albany State 23-13.
  • The Heels then played what may remain one of the wildest games of the year, eking past Appalachian State 63-61 (again, not a typo) despite the Mountaineers putting up 40 points (I keep saying this, but not a typo) in the fourth quarter. Appy scored with 31 seconds left to pull within one, missed a wide open receiver for a go-ahead two point try, gave up a touchdown on the ensuing onside kick… and scored again with nine seconds left, with former Clemson quarterback Chase Brice coming up just short on the RPO two-point attempt to tie. Appalachian State is good, but… Yikes.
  • In game three Carolina beat Georgia State 35-28, but were tied at the end of the third quarter; they gave up 18 unanswered points out of halftime to fall behind, then notched the final two scores of the game to get to the final margin. Georgia State is currently 0-4, adding in convincing losses to South Carolina and Coastal Carolina and a one-score loss to 1-3 Charlotte.

So yeah, they’re 3-0, but two of the three teams they’ve beaten are likely quite bad and their defense in particular has some massive questions to answer.

North Carolina’s Offense

The Tar Heels’ offense is their strength; as has been the case throughout Brown’s second tenure, it’s fast-paced, loaded with playmakers, and explosive. Their defense is probably quite legitimately terrible, which we’ll get into in more detail below, but their offense is good enough to paper over it against many opponents. The engine is (again, stop us if you’ve heard this one) an athletic dual-threat quarterback who has a pass-first mindset but can hurt you with his legs if given the chance. Redshirt freshman Drake Maye won the QB1 job in spring football and has done nothing to indicate he shouldn’t have through the first three games. Even allowing the competition level caveat, Maye has been excellent – a 74.2% completion rate, 9.6 yards per attempt, 11 touchdowns against just one interception through the air, and 20 carries for 165 yards (sacks excluded) and one touchdown on the ground. Notre Dame’s front will need to get pressure early and often to disrupt him.

Maye is surrounded by playmakers as well, foremost among them receiver Josh Downs, who made a few preseason All-America lists. Downs tweaked his knee against Florida A&M and hasn’t played since, but is expected back for this game. When fully healthy last year he commanded the largest target share in the country, with a whopping 40% of North Carolina’s targets aimed at him. He also ranked eighth nationally in yards per target, so he provided quantity and quality. Not news to anyone at Notre Dame, of course, as he posted 10 catches for 142 yards against the Irish last year. He’s not the only guy you have to contain, but he’s the first one.

Fellow wideout Antoine Green will be a game-time decision; he has missed all three games after suffering an unspecified upper body injury in camp. The fifth-year senior had the second most receptions on the team last season – less than a third of what Downs had, but still – and averaged 19.7 yards per catch while finding the end zone five times. The rest of the receiving corps is talented, if relatively inexperienced, and well appreciated by Maye – impressively, seven different players have already logged receiving scores and only freshman Kobe Paysour has hit double digits in receptions despite the Heels throwing it a decent amount. Tight ends Kamari Morales and Bryson Nesbit aren’t exactly gamebreakers but they’re solid (and frequent) red zone targets.

True freshman back Omarion Hampton is the leading rusher to date with 228 yards on 38 carries, but that comes with a massive asterisk – almost all his production came against the short-handed FCS team and 0-4 G5 team. Against Appy State Hampton had just 17 yards on eight carries. True freshman George Pettaway, a top 100 recruit in the 2022 cycle, has made some early noise too with 87 yards on 15 carries. He’s more of a complementary piece at this point, with Hampton (32% of carries) and Maye (22%) shouldering the majority of the load on the ground to date. Maye’s legs have been a key part of the offense’s success so far, although his last game against Georgia State was a bit of a clunker in that regard – he had 13 carries for 140 yards against Florida A&M and Appalachian State, but only seven for 25 yards against the Panthers. Nonetheless, he’s a much better runner than, say, Jack Plummer, and he can be dangerous.

Their offensive line is, as has been the case consistently in recent years, fairly suspect. Left tackle Asim Richards is a solid pass blocker but everything else about the line is less than ideal. This is a matchup that the Notre Dame defensive line is capable of winning decisively; if they can, it would bode very well for the chances of an Irish win.

North Carolina’s Defense

Gene Chizik: “Well, we’re no slouch defensively ourselves you know.”

Everyone:

I will offer the concession up front that the Notre Dame offense may well be bad enough to make any defense look good, so don’t get me wrong with anything I’m about to say here… With that out of the way: North Carolina’s defense is, once again, terrible. About the best thing you can say about their D is that there’s a guy named Storm Duck on it. (Seriously, he’s a starting corner, and on the all-name team he’s right up there with Arkansas’s Bumper Pool.)

As GoldenIsThyFame recently mused in the writers’ room, “If we can’t move the ball on this team it’s just not gonna happen this year.” Despite playing, again, a short-handed (and bad) FCS team and a bad G5 team, the defense ranks 111th nationally in rush yards per game, 101st in yards per carry, 126th in passer rating (whee!), 111th in yards per attempt, 128th in passing touchdowns allowed, 113th in yards per play allowed, and, not surprisingly, 118th in scoring defense.

Given the loss of 2021 leading sacker Tomon Fox (the guy Kyren stiff-armed into the nether realm), nobody returning posted more than 4.0 sacks last season; junior defensive end Kaimon Rucker is their most disruptive player this season, with 4.0 TFLs (2.0 sacks) and a forced fumble. Junior linebacker Cedric Gray led the team in tackles last season and leads again so far this year, with one interception to his credit as well. Sophomore Power Echols has been a steady presence in the early part of this year too. The secondary is led, inasmuch as you can say that for a unit that’s such a liability, by safety DeAndre Boykins, who is a steadying presence but, well, not much else. Former five-star Tony Grimes starts at one corner spot; the junior has been solid if unspectacular, logging a forced fumble and three passes broken up in the early going this year. Redshirt junior Duck starts at the other corner spot; he has a pick and is fourth on the team in tackles.

The pass defense is bad. Like, really really bad. The Heels have only two players in PFF’s top 50 coverage grades for the ACC – not nationally, the ACC – and they’re Gray and Echols, the two linebackers. Grimes ranks 139th and Duck ranks 140th (in the ACC!). Does it guarantee success for an anemic (to put it kindly) Irish passing game? Of course not, but man, if ever it was the time to show some signs of life, that time is now. The run defense is very slightly better but even a shaky Irish offensive line will be far and away the strongest they’ve seen to date, and they were pushed around quite a bit by the two FBS teams they played – they surrendered 288 rush yards to Appalachian State and 235 to Georgia State.

Prediction

This Notre Dame team clearly isn’t as good as we thought it was preseason, but the question of how good it really is still lurks out there as unanswerable at this point. No matter what happens tomorrow we’ll still have some questions, of course – unless all the answers we get are bad, and then we should all just plan something else to do with our fall Saturdays. If the team that showed up for the final three quarters of the Cal game is the real version of this team, some good things should still be possible. And if that’s the case, they should be able to leave Chapel Hill with a win and some renewed confidence heading into the bye week before yet another make-or-break matchup, this time with BYU in Las Vegas, in Week 5.

North Carolina has some offensive weapons, but they can be slowed down and to call their defense a sieve would give a bad name to sieves. They’re vulnerable. Will Notre Dame be able to take advantage of those vulnerabilities, though?

Key questions:

1) Will the Irish offense be competent enough to actually exploit North Carolina’s defensive weaknesses? A lot here depends on how much of the playbook is open for this game. Offensive coordinator Tommy Rees quite clearly stripped the playbook down to a handful of pages last week when Drew Pyne was on the precipice of the abyss. That can work in the right game context to reel that particular game back in, but that can’t be the plan going forward – it’s too easy for even bad defenses to counter something that’s too simple. The offensive line needs to get consistent push in the ground game, Rees needs to use advantages on the perimeter with skill position talent like Chris Tyree, Lorenzo Styles, and, yes, Braden Lenzy (just no more sideline fades, please), and Pyne has to find a way to attack at least the medium depth area of the field. If that happens, the Irish will get yards and points on this defense. If it doesn’t…

2) Has the Irish defensive line really turned a corner? During last week’s broadcast analyst Jason Garrett (I think, it might’ve been Jac Collinsworth, but who cares really) noted that Isaiah Foskey looked different, and wondered whether it was Justin Tuck’s advice to stop thinking and just fire that helped him. Well, the entire defensive line looked like it stopped thinking and just fired, with Foskey, Howard Cross, both Ademilolas, Rylie Mills, everyone seeming to be far more resemble the group we expected preseason. They need to keep that level of energy and disruption this week to break up a far more dangerous attack than what Cal had.

3) Can Notre Dame stop this game from being a track meet? I think the Irish can score, as noted, as long as they don’t shoot themselves in the foot (no sure thing, even after they run out of feet to shoot). I think the defense, with an emerging pass rush and better-than-expected secondary, is capable of containing the Carolina receivers. I also think the possibility of everything going very, very wrong is alive and well, and that however weak the Tar Heels’ defense is the Irish offense is morbidly ill-equipped to get into a shootout. Ball control will be some of it, defensive contain will be some of it, but Notre Dame can’t afford to let this become an up-tempo track meet.

Notre Dame 31

North Carolina 27