Herbstreit said it best. This game wipes away all of the equity Manny gained during the 2020 season. All of it. Mack Brown looked across the field and saw the guy he fired. This felt like Taysom Hill running for 295 yards against Texas. We’ve played two talented teams and gotten smoked both times. Nobody has any reason to believe in this program.
The scary thing is that UNC isn’t Clemson. They’re better in certain positions, but their overall talent is equal or inferior. Manny’s team just didn’t show up. Manny’s defense put up the worst performance in program history. Worse than anything we saw from Dorito. The LBs he recruited looked helpless. This was a dumb, sleepy and fragile performance in a must-win game. Baker will be a convenient target, and he may suck, but this loss falls entirely on the head coach.
This team is what the record says: a fringe Top 20 squad that beats the bad teams and gets destroyed by the real teams. We can build up our talent, but our consistent failure under the spotlight speaks to deeper issues.
Personnel-wise, the same things that killed us against Clemson showed up even worse tonight. We don’t have a split end that can make a contested catch. Wiggins runs posts and that’s it. He got bullied by a senior in high school. Our run defense is pathetic without Shaq and Pinckney, both of whom Manny inherited from Hurlie Brown. The interior linemen are average. Overall, this is the worst defense of the Manny era.
The only positive I can think of is that everyone should come back. But that doesn’t mean they will. This sucks.
