UNC hasn’t clinched Coastal yet, but Tar Heels are in express lane to ACC title game
It is perhaps only fitting that in the year the ACC finally trashed football divisions, a decade or so too late, the team most likely to win the Coastal Division is — by multiple computer ratings, entering Week 9 — the seventh-best team in the Atlantic.
It’s going to take a Biblical disaster to stop North Carolina now, and whether the Tar Heels deserve to play for an ACC title or not, the old adage that “deserve’s got nothing to do with it” certainly applies here. They’ve beaten the teams on their schedule, even if the best of them are still yet to come. They’re 4-0 with tiebreakers over all of the two-loss teams after Saturday’s comeback win over Pittsburgh, scoring the final 28 points of a 42-24 win.
They’re in the express lane to Charlotte, if only such a thing existed.
While the Atlantic is busy banging its head against the giant boulder that is Clemson, the Tar Heels just have to beat two terrible teams — at Virginia and Georgia Tech at home — to make the two difficult games left on their schedule against in-state rivals moot.
It’s nice work if you can get it.
Of course, North Carolina still has to play Wake Forest and N.C. State. The division title can still be earned, even if the Tar Heels are free to back into it at this point.
Even though ESPN’s Football Power Index and the Sagarin ratings still have North Carolina behind Syracuse and Florida State and Louisville after Saturday’s games, there’s nothing any of those teams can do about it. They’re all fighting for second place, again, while the Tar Heels can waltz to a division title.
It wasn’t always like this — Boston College and the previous iteration of Wake Forest both won the Atlantic during the intermezzo when both Clemson and Florida State were lost in the wilderness, early in the post-expansion era — but it’s been like this long enough that change was grossly overdue. All seven Coastal teams have won the title. State and Louisville and Syracuse (and Maryland, remember them?) are still waiting for that moment.
And if a team with an interim coach can’t win the Coastal (Georgia Tech’s moment has come and gone), and there’s no chance of an epic seven-way tie at 4-4, a team that would — mathematically, anyway — be an also-ran in the Atlantic advancing to face Clemson seems like an appropriate way to usher the world’s most chaotic division into history, finally.
All that said, what North Carolina may lack in overall proficiency, especially on defense, it certainly makes up in excitement. The Drake Maye-to-Josh Downs connection is as dangerous as any in college football, and Antoine Green got into the act as well Saturday night.
The Tar Heels couldn’t run the ball and gave up too many deep balls, and it didn’t matter because the Panthers never really had any answer for Maye. (Pitt’s insistence on running the ball despite the holes in the North Carolina secondary played into the Tar Heels’ hands as well; Israel Abanikanda may be the best back in the ACC, but at one point the Panthers were averaging more than 20 yards per completion.)
The Tar Heels didn’t take the lead until early in the fourth quarter but they never looked back. That’s also how they should look at the division race. They may have looked like an unlikely candidate early on, with those narrow wins and the disappointing Notre Dame loss, but they have swatted away the other contenders, one after another.
Miami. Duke. Now Pitt. You can only beat who’s in front of you, and that may be an easier road in the Coastal than the Atlantic, but you still have to win them.
This season, UNC’s road didn’t include Clemson, but that will come soon enough, in five weeks. It’s almost impossible to stop now. They have all the wiggle room they should need. The Tar Heels didn’t clinch the Coastal on Saturday night, but they might as well have.
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This story was originally published October 29, 2022 at 11:57 PM with the headline "UNC hasn’t clinched Coastal yet, but Tar Heels are in express lane to ACC title game."
