If there are any lessons to take from the three-year era of head coach Mack Brown and junior quarterback Sam Howell, it’s these: don’t leave the stadium too early, never expect a result and definitely don’t anticipate anything resembling normality.
The Tar Heels just seem to thrive in the absurd. Since 2019, they’ve known nothing else. And if you accepted these rules on Saturday, you might have found yourself with hundreds of others wearing Carolina blue on Chris Smith Field after the unranked Tar Heels took down No. 9 Wake Forest, 58-55.
Don’t try to make sense of it. It won’t make any.
“I don’t think many people across the country thought we could beat Wake Forest,” Brown said. “It’ll get them up early in the morning with a smile on their face ready to compete with Pitt.”
UNC came into Saturday’s game off a string of inconsistent performances and disappointments.
Entering the season in the same position Wake Forest was in before the game — as fringe College Football Playoff contenders — expectations were hastily shot down on a Friday night in Blacksburg, Va. If playoff hopes weren’t dead then, then they surely died with ugly losses against Georgia Tech and Florida State.
But on Saturday, none of that mattered. North Carolina faced a 14-point deficit entering the fourth quarter — against a team with the fifth-best scoring offense in the nation — and found a way to leave the stadium victorious.
“What we’re saying on the sideline is ‘We’ve been here before,’” Howell said. “There was never a doubt on the sideline, we truly believed we were going to win the game.”
As is true in the second half of individual games — broadcast graphics about UNC’s 4th quarter scoring have become almost cliché over the last three years — the Tar Heels have found a way to resuscitate themselves in the latter stages of the season since Brown’s return to Chapel Hill.
