After each ACC team’s bowl game, I’m going to write a brutally honest (good or bad) assessment of where I think that ACC football program is at.
The first ACC bowl team to finish their season was North Carolina. North Carolina suffered an embarrassing 40-21 loss to Rutgers in the Quick Lane Bowl to finish the year 6-7. Larry Fedora has been at UNC 3 years. In his defense he inherited a team that was on probation, and has had to deal with an academic scandal surrounding the UNC athletics department. Additional NCAA sanctions may still be in store. Fedora has had plenty to deal with…
That said there were some things that were under his control.
UNC was very good on offense on offense for most of the year. The defense was horrendous all season, but they beat bowl teams San Diego St., Duke, Pitt and a very good Georgia Tech squad. There were decent moments, and then something went completely wrong late in the year. UNC lost at home to NC State 35-7, and then there was the bowl game debacle to Rutgers.
What happened? Did Fedora lose his team to end the season?
I think these are questions you have to ask. NC State and Rutgers don’t have elite talent, they should not have beat UNC by a combined score of 75-28. This is a matter of motivation and game preparation and Fedora didn’t have his team ready in a rivalry game and a bowl game. That is the most discouraging part if you are a UNC fan. Last year’s 1-5 start, then 6-1 finish. This year’s late season collapse. The only consistency to UNC, is their wild inconsistency. Pick by many to win the Coastal, they ended the season as one of the worst teams in the ACC.
Other coaches in the ACC have taken more heat, but with Fedora I’m not seeing any real progress at North Carolina. It was a dreadful finish to a disappointing season. Fedora will remain UNC coach for at least 1 more year, but I don’t think he can turn it around in Chapel Hill. The defense was national laughingstock. This is a program mired in mediocrity.
If somebody picks UNC to win the Coastal next year, they obviously didn’t follow the Tar Heel football team in 2014.
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3 pings
Hokie Mark says:
December 27, 2014 at 9:05 am (UTC -5)
Agree – no progress at all (if anything, UNC has regressed under Fedora). At this point it looks like he is NOT the answer; IMO they should give him at most one more year. If things aren’t better after 4 years and a new DC, it’s time for him to go!
Jfann says:
December 27, 2014 at 10:46 am (UTC -5)
If you can’t get things done in 4 years ( 1 recruiting cycle ) it probably isn’t going to happen.
Fedora should get 1 more year to win at least 8 games. If he doesn’t, time to move on…
Chris says:
December 27, 2014 at 11:18 am (UTC -5)
6 wins for UNC and they seemed worse than that. 4 of their wins were very close and could have gone either way – they could easily have been a 4 win team, or worse. 6 of their 7 losses were by 2 TDs or more (and 3 by 20+). Agreed that this does not look like a program on the rise. Maybe the one big nugget of hope for UNC fans is that Fedora’s record at Southern Miss was pretty mediocre for his first 3 years before he broke out with a 12 win season in year 4 (of course, that program completely collapsed the next year after he’d left and has lost 32 of its last 36 games).