Back to the Drawing Board for UNC's Offense | Inside Carolina Analysis

for inside Carolina I'm Taylor Vias and I want to start off by giving a game ball sticker to the entire Carolina defense Elijah huzzy I could watch him play football all day every day with his knack for making winning plays he was targeted four times against Minnesota he allowed two catches for just two yards Javari ritzy is another name worth mentioning three sacks the defensive line as a whole came to life Amari Campbell going to that linebacker position punching out with his Club broken hand and all then of course beyond the defense the hero of the game Noah Bernett Carolina does not win without Noah Bernett who kicked the game winning field goal moving to a perfect 13 of 13 on field goal attempts longer than 40 plus yards in his UNCC career when you have a kicker like that it truly is a weapon when you when you have the confidence in your kicker to be like hey we only need to get like 15 yards to to get into field goal position and when Carolina has that confidence in their kicker it takes a lot of pressure off everybody else both on offense and defense but in this in this day after breakdown I want to spend the majority of the time talking about what I saw offensively because it's where the most concerns come from and it where and it's where it looks like the difference between a lot of wins and a lot of losses for Carolina will come from this year in these toss-up games and how that looks moving forward first a positive with the Carol Carolina offense Omar and Hampton he rushed for 129 yards and over four yards a carry against the defense that was coming downhill to fit from the secondary on just about every play it's not breaking news to say that Omar and Hampton is this great running back I I don't think I'm surprising anybody when I say that yet it's still in need of a moment of reflection to appreciate how special it is to be able to impact a game the way that he did when defenses are telling you you are priorities one priority two and priority three and that quarterback you have yeah we we just don't have any respect for him and he's going to have to beat us before we let you beat us and with Omar in Hampton 92 of his 129 rushing yards came after contact and after Max Johnson's injury Carolina's taking this step back now to reflect and evaluate what they have to work with and at the very least your main building block of your foundation is arguably the best running back in the country and I I know there's a lot of people out there uh doing the day after saying like what does Carolina have the fact that your starting point is the best running back in the country it's it's going to take it's going to take a lot of load off off thinking of how how can we make this work now now with somebody like Omar and Hampton I kind of question how sustainable it is with Hampton getting 30 carries to make the team competitive especially with these loaded box looks that's going to be an issue and it was going to be an issue even before Max Johnson got hurt and now it's it's Amplified even more because I'm watching that game early and I'm thinking this isn't it at at the quarterback at the quarterback position this isn't quarterback play that you can win with at the ACC level and and during those struggles I saw the narrative building on social media from the fans with why the backup quarterback is everybody's favorite player because of the unknown and and the hope that the thought around well what's waiting has to be better than what we're seeing on the field and from from my time in locker rooms that's not always true and there's a reason why Harold didn't come in until Max Johnson got hurt I was told by multiple people close to the program that the competition for the starting position wasn't all that close in training camp so I believe when m brown comes out during game week and he says that he was going to play two quarterbacks it was largely a smoke screen to give Minnesota an extra thing that they thought that they would have to prepare for because in that first half I thought there were multiple opportunities to look for a spark with a change at quarterback but Carolina kept playing Johnson because of what the coaches have seen since the start of August when when training camp began and they believe that Johnson gave them the best chance to win which you can't knock a coach for doing in that moment but in in the larger scheme of things it is an indictment on the quarterback room in Chapel Hill to get to that point and I said it in a previous segment where where there smoke that there's fire which Kobe Criswell coming back to Chapel Hill transferring back from Arkansas because in his mind at least jacobe Kriswell is coming back and he's he's looking at this quarterback room and thinking he could beat out what was in front of him over time and from what we saw in Minnesota that's that's really not out of the realm of possibility quarterback play entered Thursday as as a big question mark and the hope for Carolina was that the coaching staff understood that the Personnel that they were working with and they were confident that they could build an offense that could hide deficiencies and the closest thing I think that we saw to what what the coaches had in mind for what the Carolina offense was supposed to be was that opening drive of the second half where UNCC had a win with creativity and playing with a quick game that could get the quarterback in Rhythm the downside to that approach is one negative play throws your drive completely off the tracks and then you're staring at a a third in what feels like a country mile with a quarterback that can't really push the ball down field and all this when when I'm saying all this with the quarterback position I also want to be sure to say that the blame doesn't fall squarely on the quarterback there's no TZ Walker there's no dami Brown on this roster and I've seen the push back at times why does a team need a true number one receiver instead of a bunch of twos and threes that they could spread the ball around with it's because you need somebody that you can count on consistently to create separation that takes attention elsewhere to free up space for your other options and Carolina doesn't have that so the result is these tighter throw windows and a quarterback that does look more hesitant to pull the trigger on some of the on some of these throw and whether Carolina had intentions to play Conor Harold or not at this point it's really irrelevant he's the guy moving forward with M Johnson's injury and what chip Lindsay has to do is build this offense that plays to his strengths if Carolina doesn't like how Harold sits in a pocket without the vision to see downfield over his bigger offensive lineman with three mountains in front of him shift the pocket build around the read options maximize his ability as a as a dual threat quarterback and if you if you are Carolina today on Friday luckily for you your next three games are NC Central UNCC Charlotte and James Madison and and that is a lot of time both in practice and with game reps to figure something out on that side of the ball before conference play what you can't do is what we saw Carolina do last night when Conor Harold comes into the game against Minnesota it felt like an offense that was turtling back into their shell it didn't feel like there was a plan for him and that's part of the reason why I believe that Carolina didn't have the intention to play him in this game because of when he he did go in the the offense got very vanilla and it felt like they went into survival mode the good news for Carolina they they did survive they they survived that test they won on the road in an opener against a power four opponent for the first time since 1992 beating a team that wanted to beat them in the trenches it's just got to be better moving forward and from what I saw last night the margin for error with Carolina offensively is Razor thin and it's going to demand great execution great play calling on every play to capitalize on these scoring opportunities to win you games