5 Takeaways From UNC's Win At Boston College

CHESTNUT HILL, MA – North Carolina had to fight it out Saturday, but the Tar Heels did just enough to hold off Boston College, 26-22, at Alumni Stadium.

The Tar Heels scored touchdowns on their first two possessions and built a 14-3 lead. They led 21-16 at halftime and 24-16 with 5:46 remaining when BC took possession on its own 31-yard-line after UNCs Grayson Atkins missed a 47-yard field goal attempt.

In a drive that included multiple penalties by both teams, including BC having a touchdown called back, and big plays by UNC’s defense, the Eagles had one more big play of its own scoring a touchdown with 45 seconds left. But Trey Morrison intercepted the two-point conversion attempt and ran 100 yards the other way for a two-point conversion for the Tar Heels and the game’s final points.

Twelfth-ranked 12 UNC improved to 2-0 on the season, both games in the ACC, and the Eagles fell to 2-1, 1-1 in the ACC.

Here are 5 Takeaways from UNC’s win at BC:

The Tar Heels were credited with just three sacks and seven QB hurries, but it sure looked like they did a lot more than that. They had BC QB Phil Jurkovec moving around all night and repeatedly knocked him to the ground. Jurkovec attempted 56 passes, and while he wasn’t pressured all the time, UNC did enough to keep him out of establishing a rhythm.

Also, on some of the plays, Jurkovec moved around so much the extended plays resulted in flags being thrown against the Eagles, including on the last key drive of the game.

UNC’s sacks were by Chazz Surratt, Tomon Fox and Tyrone Hopper. The QB hurries were by Jeremiah Gemmel (two) and one each by Surratt, Hopper, Ray Vohasek, Desmond Evans and Myles Murphy.

Jurkovec was 37-for-56 with 313 yards, but he had to work for every bit of what he generated.

“I think we got to the quarterback a lot,” Surratt said. “He’s a big quarterback so he was able to make some plays and throw the ball away. We probably could have had like seven or eight sacks. But he was a big guy, tough to bring down… I thought we did get some good pass rush in spots during the game.”

UNC’s defense allowed just one touchdown in the first half, which came on a 5-yard BC drive. It followed an interception thrown by Sam Howell when he was popped by a BC defender. Otherwise, the Tar Heels forced field goals on the other three occasions BC got into the red zone before the intermission.

The first time BC failed to score a touchdown in the red zone was after Trey Morrison popped Long inside the 5-yard-line on third down. The third time came at the end of the first half when the Heels didn’t allow any big plays forcing BC to use up enough clock it had to settle for the kick right before the half expired.

In the second half, BC only got inside the red zone on its final possession, and it scored a touchdown. Still, BC got into the red zone five times, and while it scored on each occasion, holding the Eagles to three field goals proved to perhaps be the outcome of the game.

Michael Carter is making the most of his touches this season. The senior running back went for 78 yards on seven attempts in the season-opening win over Syracuse and here at BC he gained 121 yards on 16 attempts with a long of 35 yards.

In two games, Carter has 199 yards on 23 carries for an average of 8.7 yards an attempt. With Sam Howell a bit off and UNC’s pass protection struggling (four sacks allowed, Howell was hit plenty), Carter’s big day helped offset some of Carolina’s other issues.

“Mike’s a great player. He can do things in both the running game and the passing game,” sophomore quarterback Sam Howell said about Carter. “Whenever you give him a little bit of space he can take advantage of it and more after that. So every time he takes advantage when he gets the ball in his hands, and that showed tonight.

Sam Howell has had better performances as UNC’s quarterback, much better ones. He didn’t complete long passes downfield, was just 14-for-26 passing (225 yards, 2 TDs, one INT), had a third pass intercepted on the young season, and appeared off more than what has been the norm. He did do some terrific things, though.

Howell made some winning plays perhaps hidden in the Tar Heels’ win. Leaner and quicker than last year, Howell picked up three first downs on third-down runs amassing 35 total yards on the plays. On two third-and-sevens and one third-and-six he had runs of 20, eight and seven yards.

The first scramble to extend a drive went for 20 yards and came a few plays before the Tar Heels’ second touchdown, giving them a 14-3 lead. The second one came on a drive that rendered no points and the third one was on a drive that UNC ended up scoring its third TD of the day taking a 21-13 lead late in the first half.

“Definitely, when I see space, I want to take advantage of that,” Howell said. “I feel like a lot of teams don’t really account for me as a runner, so there’s a lot of space out there and definitely when I see space, I try to take advantage of it. It happened a couple of times tonight.”

Last season, UNC was flagged for 10 penalties in its season-opening win over South Carolina but a week later had just one penalty in a win over Miami. In this season’s opener, a win over Syracuse, the Tar Heels were flagged nine times for 91 yards and Brown said two weeks ago one of the things his team would miss with the cancellation of the Charlotte game was not having a chance to clean up some of that stuff in an actual game.

Perhaps some leniency is warranted here in that the team kept calling this is second opener, which might explain nine penalties for 96 yards against the Eagles. Some wee costly and some were just ugly.

In one stretch, after UNC had six penalties to BC’s three, the Eagles were flagged six straight times, but the Tar Heels got four penalties in the final period, including on BC’s drive that resulted in a touchdown with 45 seconds left.

“I think we had nine penalties against Syracuse, which is entirely too many, and then we had 10 tonight,” UNC Coach Mack Brown said. “So, it's kind of like we repeated the same mistakes that we made in the opener. And the other thing, I looked up at one point in the second quarter I think, and we had one five-yard penalty and they had one five-yard penalty and then we both went crazy and they ended up with 12 in their third game and we ended up with ten.

“So, it was too many penalties in this game to have a bunch of smart kids and good coaches out there coaching them. So, we've got to clean that up for next week.”