Pitt-UNC Concerns

CHAPEL HILL – North Carolina did plenty to lose a football game Saturday at Kenan Stadium. But in the end, the Tar Heels also did enough to win, which they did, 37 -36 over Pittsburgh in a crucial Coastal Division contest.

Here are some of the concerns that came from UNC’s third victory of the season against one loss and third consecutive victory.

First 45 Snaps – Pitt ran 38 offensive plays to Carolina’s 7 over the first 45 snaps of the game and owned a 19-7 lead as a result. This was in part self-inflicted by Carolina – safety allowed and a fumble on its first four plays – but it was also dominance. There is never any excuse to open a game with numbers like this.

And from a strategic point, it caused a mini nightmare for the staff. The Heels had to change what they normally want to do.

“At the end of the first quarter, we realized we only had the ball like three plays, four plays, so we knew offensively we had to keep the defense off the field,” UNC coach Larry Fedora said. “So it was do what we do – we didn’t have a chance to get into a rhythm really in the first quarter, and we got into some sort of a rhythm in the second quarter.”

Another Safety, Seriously? – The play on the safety was just a poor call by the staff. It was the third safety allowed in three games against FBS teams, which has to be some kind of record. For some reason, the Heels have run a screen pass, deep handoff in a shotgun, and a jet sweep leading to the three safeties. Why not just power forward, move the ball some and if you can’t get a first down you can kick it out of there without giving the other team 2 precious points.

The Heels won the game, so the safety issue was cause for a little humor from the head coach.

“We’re close to setting a national record for safeties,” he said, as laughter erupted in the press conference room. “That’s something, I guess, we can be proud of. Two away? We’ll work hard to get that.

“I’ve never seen anything like it, actually.”

The NCAA record is 5 in a season by Wake Forest in 2001.

“I’m going to have to call (former Wake Forest head coach) Jim (Grobe) and ask him how he did that,” Fedora joked.

Missed Tackles – UNC doesn’t release how many missed tackles it has each week, but one would think the number was alarmingly high Saturday. No way to venture a guess, but it appeared as if there were missed tackles every other time Pitt snapped the ball.

Running Game – Carolina never could generate much on the ground, finishing the game with 18 yards on 22 attempts. In fairness to the conventional ground attack, the Heels lost 36 yards on 4 sacks, but that just means the conventional ground game amassed 54 yards on 18 attempts. And, because they couldn’t get into any groove on the ground, Pitt adjusted to UNC’s passing game and eventually slowed it, forcing three straight stops. That was a direct result of the accumulative effect of not running the ball well.

Sacks Allowed – Mitch Trubisky was sacked 4 times costing the Tar Heels 36 yards, but he was forced to move an awful lot all day. The Heels had been pretty solid protecting him through the first three games, but that wasn’t an eye-pleasing performance Saturday. The Heels moved the ball, but much of that was because the skill guys did a lot of skilled things.

Defending The Jet Sweep – The Tar Heels talked about it all week, they knew it was coming, that it was a weapon Pitt uses as part of its explosive offense. It’s not just a compliment to James Conner, so how the Heels do? Not very well. Pitt rant he jet motion 22 times and on 14 occasions gave the ball to the receiver in motion racking up 143 yards. Quadree Henderson ran it 9 times for 107 yards.

As we noted earlier in the week, this was quite taxing on the Heels.

“For the D-line it sucks, because that play we can’t really do anything about,” senior defensive end Mikey Bart said. “So, when they play that we just make sure the running back doesn’t have it and let the secondary and the linebackers take care of it.

“They ran it at least three or four times a drive, it seemed like, and they had success with it.”

Special Teams – Carolina is usually very strong on all elements of special teams, but that wasn’t the case Saturday. The Heels had a punt return for a score brought back because of an illegal block, a missed field goal, a failed 2-point conversion attempt, and even its kickoff coverage, which is usually among the best in the nation allowing 20 yards per return, was at almost 28 Saturday. In a 1-point game, these mistakes were nearly costly.

Fans – Maybe it’s not wise to call out the fans, but an awful lot of people left early in the fourth quarter and continued filing out even though the game wasn’t close to being over. Yes, it was hot, and yes, the Tar Heels weren’t exactly putting on an inspiring performance, but with just six home games, it’s hard to understand why people couldn’t have stuck it out.

When UNC cut the margin to 36-30 with 5:24 left there may have been about 17,000 fewer fans in the stadium than when the quarter began. The Heels got a stop on that possession, got the ball back and won the game. Senior wide receiver Ryan Switzer said the players certainly noticed so many people left, and it bothered them.

“Anytime you get a win like that, when fans are leaving the stadium and everyone’s counting you out – yes, we noticed that, we noticed people leaving – but we felt like we were still in the game no matter what.”