Let’s talk about how weird this season has gotten for Carolina football.
UNC is currently tied for fourth place in the ACC alongside Clemson, and they are one of four other teams that only have one conference loss. If the Tar Heels beat Syracuse and Clemson loses to Virginia Tech, suddenly the Heels are solely in fourth place and could technically be in a fight to make it to the ACC championship game. How likely is that to happen? Nobody can say for sure at the moment, because nobody predicted this happening before the season started. But that’s where we’re at, and it’s…weird.
Optimistic Carolina fans are probably wondering, why is it weird that UNC would be doing well? This team has figured things out this season to be competitive in the ACC, and that is great. There’s no doubt that this is a favorable outcome, but here’s why it’s weird: this is supposed to be the difficult stretch of the ACC schedule, and (almost) everybody looks beatable when that wasn’t the call at the start of the season. Taking UNC’s improvement out of it, Louisville, Virginia, and NC State haven’t looked particularly impressive lately, and this game against Syracuse at home is winnable. There’s virtually no chance that the Heels take down Miami, but imagine if everyone UNC is in a dog fight with to make it to Charlotte also finishes with two losses. Again, nobody could’ve seen all this coming.
That said, don’t start making plans to travel to the Queen City just yet. As winnable as all these games are, the Heels could just as well lose any and all of these, but it all starts with Syracuse tonight. Right now the Heels are the 9.5-point favorites to win, so hopefully things play out as such against the Orange. If not, all those pessimists will re-appear and do the Thriller dance all the way to social media to resume cooking Bill Belichick into oblivion.
If you aren’t making it to Chapel Hill for the game, feel free to hang out with us in the comments section. As always, we will be back after the game with post-game analysis and takes. Until then, Go Heels!