A UNC season that began with such promise in Charlotte fizzles to an end there
Mack Brown dodged a mayonnaise creme rinse for the second time, but at least that washes out. North Carolina will carry this loss, and the way its season fizzled, for far longer.
Even with half of a roster, without Drake Maye and Tez Walker and so many others, there was at least the imperative Wednesday to avoid a fourth straight bowl loss, to avoid finishing a once-promising season with five losses in the Tar Heels’ final seven games.
West Virginia got the mayo bath. North Carolina was left with another big dollop of lingering disappointment.
Wednesday’s 30-10 loss to West Virginia in the Duke’s Mayo Bowl put dismal punctuation on the Tar Heels’ late-season collapse. In mid-October, they still harbored realistic hopes of a New Year’s Six bowl, if not the College Football Playoff. If they were to end up in Charlotte, it was surely going to be for the ACC title game. By late December, they had fallen to 8-5 after losing a bowl game they were merely enduring by the time it ended.
“We’ve got to get back to work,” North Carolina defensive lineman Kaimon Rucker said. “We’ve got to figure out what caused us to not be as successful in the second half as we were in the first half. I don’t personally have an answer for it. I wish I did.”
Since Brown’s first year back in Chapel Hill and a win over Temple in the Military Bowl that hinted at better times ahead, the Tar Heels have now lost in the Orange Bowl, the Holiday Bowl and this one twice — and are 2-10 in the postseason going back to Butch Davis’ final game, a win in the Music City Bowl in 2010.
“You’re 9-1 last year and you didn’t finish well,” Brown said. “Part of it’s the schedule, but you still have to beat some good teams to win. We were 6-0 this year and didn’t finish well. We’ve got to figure out why we’re not finishing well. We’re so close. We don’t want to hang around eight or nine (wins). ... I’ve got to figure out why we can’t get over the hump at the end.”
Unlike those baffling and inexcusable losses to Virginia and Georgia Tech that submarined UNC’s season, this one was all too easy to explain. With Conner Harrell deputizing for the NFL-bound Maye at quarterback Wednesday among the many opt-outs and transfer exits, the Tar Heels couldn’t open holes for Omarion Hampton and made far too many avoidable errors, especially on special teams.
The Tar Heels were down 7-0 in less than the time it takes to unscrew a jar of mayonnaise, let alone spread it on a sandwich, giving up a 75-yard touchdown pass on the first play of the game. They continued to make things tough on themselves, throwing two interceptions in the red zone, falling for a fake field goal, allowing a punt return touchdown and handing West Virginia the ball back by botching a punt return of their own.
The Mountaineers didn’t make it easy for the Tar Heels, either, determined to let anyone other than Hampton beat them. Of Hampton’s 19 carries for 74 yards, 11 went for 3 or fewer yards. That opened the door for Harrell as both a runner and passer, at least until Harrell turned his ankle in the second quarter. He did connect with J.J. Jones on a 16-yard pass in the end zone — curiously ruled incomplete and then correctly overruled — for North Carolina’s only touchdown of the game.
North Carolina actually had more yards and more first downs than West Virginia through three quarters, but the mistakes that piled up — the punt gaffes, the interceptions, the seven sacks — put the Tar Heels in a hole from which they could not recover. The defense, which had kept the Tar Heels afloat, finally wilted early in the fourth as West Virginia rolled down the field, 78 yards in less than two minutes, to go up 27-10.
So that’s how it ends, this North Carolina season that began with a win over South Carolina on this same field, a night that overflowed with promise for the season ahead. A different Brown, West Virginia’s Neal, endured the postgame baptism with soybean oil, egg yolks, distilled and cider vinegar, salt, oleoresin paprika, natural flavors and calcium disodium EDTA (added to protect flavor).
For Mack Brown and North Carolina, difficult decisions await now, with Brown having announced his intent to return but clearly needing more changes to his staff. A year after swapping out offensive coordinators, the message boards have already fired defensive coordinator Gene Chizik on Brown’s behalf.
“Everyone’s got an opinion,” Brown said. “I’ve got to make the decisions.”
In that respect, this game was inconsequential. This loss is easily dismissed, for obvious reasons, even if a win would have been as wholeheartedly embraced as it would have been welcome. The questions North Carolina faces now — as a coaching staff, as a program — go far deeper than another postseason loss in Charlotte.
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This story was originally published December 27, 2023 at 9:04 PM.
