For both UNC and NC State, Saturday is a badly needed fresh start to the season
This might, under other circumstances, be a weekend when North Carolina and N.C. State could relax a little against what should be outmanned and outgunned opponents. Instead, after two weeks of unexpected drama and near-calamity, these games are exactly what both teams need.
A chance for a fresh start.
Emotionally, this hasn’t been the beginning either team envisioned or expected. Statistically, they’re both undefeated. Only one of those things will matter at the end of the season, but they both matter at the moment.
Saturday’s games — Charleston Southern at N.C. State, North Carolina at Georgia State — would not often assume a position of importance in the grand sweep of the schedule. But after two impossibly narrow escapes, they offer a well-timed opportunity for two teams that haven’t yet met their own standards to start moving forward.
(Duke and Wake Forest, meanwhile: We’re good, thanks.)
North Carolina’s defensive incompetence to start the season is well-documented, not that giving up 40 points to Appalachian State in the fourth quarter of a game that was otherwise done and dusted isn’t worth repeating. The Tar Heels struggled to put away a Florida A&M team with half as many scholarship players that nearly boycotted the game in protest, then found themselves in a high-octane, high-altitude shootout with the Mountaineers in Boone.
Drake Maye has been even better than advertised at quarterback, but overall, the first two weeks have been about as discouraging as a pair of wins can be. Saturday’s game at Georgia State offers the Tar Heels the opportunity to move to 2-0 on the road in the Sun Belt ... no, wait ... continue building momentum on offense while finally generating some on defense.
And they better: After this, UNC has a week off and then hosts Notre Dame. If the Tar Heels aren’t ready for that, the Irish might hang 40 on North Carolina in all four quarters.
The thing about N.C. State’s narrow escape over ECU in Greenville was that the Wolfpack had every opportunity to blow that game open and was instead stopped two separate times on the goal line in the second half trying to pound the ball in. Take care of that basic task, and it’s a different game in the second half, a romp to the finish full of good vibes.
But that’s also the thing about football: Blown chances and missed opportunities have a habit of bouncing back on you, and that’s exactly what East Carolina did with its second and third leases on life: Bounced right back on the Wolfpack and left N.C. State within a makeable field goal of disaster.
N.C. State has to play better than it did last week, and not just on the goal line, but the bigger issue may be rebuilding confidence in a team that felt, for all the world, like it had lost (and probably should have) a game it just won. A raucous afternoon home game against an opponent that’s in it for the paycheck might be just the trick to flip the mood ahead of a much tougher game against Texas Tech in two weeks.
These early-season schedule-fillers so often feel like just that, rehearsals for more important performances to come. In this case, for both teams, they’re remedial exercises in becoming the teams they were supposed to be, thought they were, still can be.
The season has already started. North Carolina is 2-0. N.C. State is 1-0. Nothing has been lost. But for both, in many very real ways, their seasons really begin Saturday. Or so they hope.
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This story was originally published September 9, 2022 at 5:10 AM with the headline "For both UNC and NC State, Saturday is a badly needed fresh start to the season."
