UNC Offense Short On Answers, Time With Two Games Remaining

CHAPEL HILL, N.C. — Even if North Carolina had made good on all six of its field goal attempts against Wake Forest on Saturday — with two of those six getting blocked — it still wouldn’t have been enough to defeat the Demon Deacons on the road.

The Tar Heels’ 28-12 loss was the sixth time the team has scored fewer than 20 points this season, with all of those games resulting in losses. Saturday was the first time since 2016 that the team didn’t produce a touchdown.

North Carolina ranks last in the ACC in yards per game and second-to-last in points per game. Nationally, the team sits 123rd in scoring and 131st in total offense.

UNC’s offense has lagged behind all year statistically, resulting in either blowout losses or close losses with glaring missed opportunities. When asked about the offensive struggles throughout the year, Bill Belichick stated a “combination” of issues has contributed to the inability to move the ball down the field consistently and score more points.

“We all just need to do a better job,” Belichick said on Tuesday. “We need to do a better job of coaching. We need to do a better job of execution. We need to do a better job with our communication. We missed some opportunities that we would like to have back and wish we could have hit, but we didn’t hit them. And we have to live with that. So we’ll keep working harder to make those opportunities count and try to keep creating them. Hopefully, we can capitalize on those. 

“But the things that we’re doing fairly well, we want to try to keep doing those. The things that we need to do better, we want to try to improve on those, and that changes a little bit from week to week as we see different opponents, different schemes, different players. It’s not the same every single week.”

With a 10-game sample size, it’s apparent that UNC’s offense simply isn’t an effective unit. In Saturday’s loss to Wake Forest, UNC managed just 257 total yards of offense, the sixth time that the team supplied fewer than 300 yards in a game. No matter how many skill players have been cycled in and out of the rotation, or even in seeing the one-game quarterback change against Clemson, the offense has lacked success for the lion’s share of the season.

Gio Lopez pointed to red zone execution as one of UNC’s problems. UNC has scored on 21 of its 29 trips inside the opposing 20-yard line, ranking second-to-last in the ACC in red zone scoring rate. The Tar Heels have scored 13 red zone touchdowns, translating to 44.8%, which is also 16th in the conference.

“We just gotta get better at putting up touchdowns,” Lopez said. “We have a great field goal kicker. He does a great job, he showed up really big for us last week. But I just think we need to be better in the red zone and just be able to get punched the ball in the end zone earlier as well.

On scoring in the red zone: “I think it’s execution. We just have to execute our plays to the best of our abilities. And sometimes, we struggle in the lower part of the field. But I think just overall, (executing) the play to the best of our ability.”

Lopez has completed 63.3% of his passes for 1,425 yards, eight touchdowns and five interceptions. He ranks 15th among ACC quarterbacks in passing yards per game. He took ownership of his role in the offensive struggles on Tuesday.

“You want to be the leader for the team, you want to put the offense in the best situation,” Lopez said. “For me, I want to be helpful for anybody and just want to be that leader. When the offense is struggling, I feel like that’s on me. I want to put us in the best places to win.”

North Carolina will face a Duke team on Saturday that ranks sixth in the ACC at 33.4 points per game. The Blue Devils have scored 40 or more points three times against ACC opponents. UNC hasn’t scored more than 27 against any FBS team this season.

UNC’s defense has kept it in games throughout the last five weeks, despite taking a step back against Wake Forest. Even with a regression on defense, though, the Tar Heels had opportunities to extend drives and seek touchdowns instead of field goals. But they couldn’t capitalize on much, as they got inside Wake’s 30-yard line five times and managed just nine points in those visits.

Belichick’s explanations for the offense on Tuesday didn’t shed much light on why the consistency hasn’t been there, but the woes in both the passing and running game have the team at 4-6 and among the worst offenses in the country with only two games to go.