#54 North Carolina

Chapel Hill, NC

Kenan Stadium

October 16, 2021

North Carolina 45 - Miami 42 (ESPN Recap)

Planned this weekend back in mid-July when it was expected that these two teams would have one combined loss between them and the game would decide the Coastal division of the ACC. Instead, they were both unranked, each had three losses, and lost key players to injuries.

The commitment was to come see Sammy Howell play a live home game before he heads to the NFL. Was hoping Salerno would make the trip, but work trapped him in Cali. Wife and I went up to Chapel Hill and connected with Adam and Jonas for a facilities tour Friday and field passes Saturday. Really cool experience seeing all the glitz of the football building, practice facility, and stadium. Thank you to Kevin for his time and the special experience.

Friday night we ate dinner at Top of the Hill and then ran into Tyler Hansbrough at a cocktail bar. He’s still Psycho T.

Saturday, we tailgated from 11-2 with Miller Lites and cornhole. Despite homecoming, a big recruiting weekend, and a quasi-rivalry game with the Canes in town, there is not a lot of pre-game hype or activity at UNC. Feels like a larger Amherst, with a beautiful campus, students exercising, and school-sponsored gatherings for various groups. We made the best of it: logged an undefeated cornhole day, shot-gunned a beer, and then walked into the stadium and directly onto the field.

It was cool to watch the full cycle of preparations for the game.

A storm came through and passed right before kickoff which pushed us to the tunnel and enabled us to take some pretty cool videos of the Heels coming into the locker room and heading back to the field.

We stayed on the field until kickoff and then took our seats.

Both teams are not great, and really show off their weaknesses on the defensive side of the ball. UNC scored 45 points against a Manny Diaz team that is prideful about its defense, including Ty Chandler and Sammy each running for ~100 yds and 2 TDs. Josh Downs caught 11 of the 17 completed passes and was probably targeted 14 times in the game. He’s a stud. Miami’s team had one good player in Jaylan Knighton, but really lacked playmakers and excitement besides him.

Highlights of the game included two long Howell TD runs, a nice pick-6 by Miami on UNC’s second possession of the game, and then a few throws by Tyler Van Dyke of the U who was atrocious for three quarters and then turned into Patrick Mahomes for 10 minutes of the second half (cross body & side armed dimes on 4th down and the 2pt conversion, plus an out-route down the sideline on 3rd and long). I would still rate Van Dyke’s performance as “terrible” since on average, he missed his receivers by 3-5 yards. He did make half a dozen good throws in the game though, if he wants a participation trophy for that.

It felt like UNC was winning by 21-28 points all game, but Miami hung around and eventually had the ball down 3 with 90 seconds left and momentum. The Canes drove down to the +16 yard line with no timeouts, 6 seconds left, and 3rd and 4…before really blowing it and turning the ball over on a batted ball INT to end the game. A 33-yard FGA to force OT was available but the play call was terrible given clock and situation. Getting a shorter FG with so little time left and no timeouts didn’t make sense and the throw was intended for a receiver 5-7 yards down field over the middle. Has to be an endzone shot or sideline throw there with no sacks allowed. We thought that would be the final nail in Manny’s coffin. Time will tell.

I won UNC -4 1H, missed a 2H middle of UNC -3 and Miami +3.5, won prop bets that UNC’s first score would be TD and that UNC would score in all four quarters. The storm that rolled through tricked me into betting the Q1 under 14.0, which was dead 6 minutes into the game as conditions were perfect by kickoff. I live bet a few other things throughout which were a wash (losing U79, winning highest scoring quarter, etc). Fun degen game for me while Des Ridder did Des Ridder things to UCF.

We grabbed Mexican somewhere on Franklin, met up with Mark C at Topo and had one round with his alumni crew before shutting it down.

Chapel Hill has a beautiful campus, tons of bars/restaurants/coffee shops, and a diverse and friendly student body and staff. It is not sports-obsessed (at least not for Football, yet) like some other FBS programs and gives off more of a Stanford vibe (Northwestern and BC have them beat from a smart kids tailgating perspective). Look forward to comparing to Duke whenever I make it to Durham because a lot of shit was talking about that school, city, and lack of activities.