CHAPEL HILL – North Carolina football coach Larry Fedora is balancing a couple of acts this week trying to keep his team focused and positive in spite of recent struggles while also preparing to face the most challenging offense the Tar Heels will face all season.

UNC is 1-6 overall and 1-4 in the ACC. It’s lost four straight games and this week must deal with Georgia Tech’s triple option

Paul Johnson’s triple-option has been mostly humming of late so much that his team has attempted just three total passes in its last two wins.

Yellow Jackets quarterback Tobias Oliver attempted just one pass in a 49-28 win at Virginia Tech last week, but he ran the ball 40 times for 215 yards and three touchdowns and the team as a whole ran for 465 that night.

In a 66-31 romp at Louisville, the Jackets attempted two passes and ran for 542 yards, including 175 yards and two touchdowns by quarterback Taquan Marshall. And in a 63-17 win over Bowling Green, Jackets’ quarterbacks attempted seven passes and the team ran the ball for 372 yards.

In a 28-14 loss at home to Duke, Georgia Tech was 7-17 passing and ran for just 229 yards, losing three fumbles in the process. Clearly, forcing Tech into fumbling the ball is a key, but handling assignments comes first. The more experienced Tar Heels have been through it before, but the younger ones haven’t and a couple may play a lot of snaps Saturday when the Jackets visit for a noon start.

“There’s carryover for the guys that have played against it, but the new guys there’s no carryover whatsoever, so you have just a few days to get them prepared and get them ready,” Fedora said. “That’s the nature of that beast.”

*Upon reviewing the film, Fedora said pretty much what he did after Saturday’s game: The defense struggled with UVA quarterback Bryce Perkins and the offense wasn’t consistent, particularly the running game.

The issues with the ground game was twofold: Virginia sold out to stop the run but UNC’s offensive line just didn’t get the push and execute as it needs to for things to work as designed.

“You’re preparing for multiple front when you’re preparing for them, and they didn’t necessarily run all the fronts that we expected them to run,” Fedora said. “They did do quite a bit of movement up front with those guys, I thought their safeties got involved very well.”

*Fedora said Saturday he didn’t do enough to put his team in position to win. So he was asked about it right after making that statement and said he needed to look at the film to get a better idea. He was asked again Monday morning what he meant Saturday, especially now having seen the film.

“One thing is I would have probably limited the plays that we were going to run in the game and probably just worked on those plays,” he replied. “Unfortunately, when you’re working against multiple fronts like that and preparing for different fronts – not all plays are good versus every front – in that case we had too much offense in, had to prepare for too much offense and then weren’t able to use it.”

*The topic of a 12th game came up again Monday, and while Fedora had no response following Saturday’s game when asked about it, he had more to say Monday.

“There has been,” he said. “(Director of Athletics) Bubba (Cunningham), he and Rick Steinbacher are working on it, (though) it’s not something that I talk about with them every day, but it’s definitely something that I know they’re working on.”

Asked if it’s still an option, Fedora said, “Yes.”

THI’s take: This was an on again, off again issue for about three weeks and has tapered off of late. It could have happened if the department believed the game was needed for bowl eligibility, and for that to be an issue UNC would have to win out. Our understanding is the talks have been minimal and this is “extremely highly unlikely” to happen.

*Fedora wasn’t prepared to add any names to the out-for-the-season list, but did acknowledge the following players: Jonathan Sutton; Allen Cater; Myles Wolfolk; Antwuan Branch and Chazz Surratt. Antoine Greene is out for the year but Fedora hasn’t acknowledged it. There’s a chance Jonathan Smith is also out for the year, but THI hasn’t had that confirmed by enough sources, the same goes for Cade Fortin.