I was at the game and re watched it last night
Good - Oline, Oline, Oline. Carr was great, wrs, we have a clear #1 RB. The scheme vs unc I think is what a lot of people (myself included) expected to see coming out the gates this year. Use your experienced stud QB, WRs, to set up a power run game with a lot of counter. It was a great game plan offensively minus some near the goal line issues, but the obvious one sounds like it was a really bad CJ check. This game is probably 41-14 or more if ND punches it in to go up 28-7 from the 1. OLine again, they were mauling UNC dline. On the first TD pass to faison (great throw), it was actually busted coverage, flanagan was wide open for a walk in.
I was a bit confused on our pass rush in person, but after watching the replay, I thought the DLine played well. They weren't always asked to rush him, and more contain, forcing edwards to make tough throws. Here's where the problem comes in, hopefully this is a one game issue but I'm not sold it is. I'll start with the LBs, they were not good. Many people talked about wanting UNC to try and run outside, well, that's the only success they had with their RBs, as our LBs identified and played outside runs terrible. The lbs were also not good in identifying their zone, rerouting, and getting deep enough in zone coverage. For the season our lbs have 3.5 TFL and no sacks across all 4 core LBs combined. That's terrible through 5 games. Ausberry and Bowen just are not making plays. 2 of their large chunck pass plays on their td drives were mostly on the LBs. They coverted multiple third and longs running outside on our LBs. The rest of the bad was pretty much on Shuler and sanders. Shuler got exposed a bit. Tailch dominated in TE coverage, shuler struggled. I have no clue why Sanders played so much, he had a rough game. He was playing such soft coverage. He had significantly more snaps than DJ, and DJ has been playing great this year. Confusing. IMO, talich is playing so well right now when Tae comes back, i don't think you take talich off the field. It probably won't happen, but to me it's a tae or adon decision when tae is completely healthy. ST - WTF with dropping the ball (Focus). I'm not sure why Zackery is getting playing time even on ST. Jeffery was in weird position, but Zackery is what completely caused it to be a TD. The amount of TDs he's given up vs snaps played is insane. His terrible effort and lack of physicality not only didn't even attempt to tackle their returner, it blocked our other tacklers.
Lastly, UNC was playing dirty after the whistle. Traore and Knapp got bloodied up big time. Ausberry was dumb to rip off the helmet, but he was getting double teamed for about 3 to 4 seconds after the whistle. I'm all for playing through the whistle, but that was absurd.
I'm super excited to see the offense build on this (hopefully similar scheme/approach) going forward. The D has a great chance to learn while winning. Hopefully we see DJ playing a lot more going forward, and our LBs need to wake up, they were ok this season so far, but just bad on saturday. It looked like LB play from early 2025.
