While I realize floral print for fall isn’t groundbreaking, I have been seeing it everywhere this season! I’m loving the bold, moody floral prints and have found myself gravitating towards them anytime I see them! I even wore this dress for…

Photo by G Fiume/Getty Images This will be an important week of practice for the Heels as they gear up to take on that one team in Raleigh this Saturday. We are officially three days removed from what was clearly a pretty bad night for the Tar Heels. Credit to Florida State for punching UNC in the mouth in the first half, but the fact of the matter is that there were a number of self-inflicted wounds as well. The lesson learned? Underestimating your opponent/getting too comfortable causes nothing but problems, and Mack Brown agrees. Brown, Phil Longo, and Jay Bateman all discussed the various miscues in Saturday night’s game in Tallahassee. Here’s what the head coach had to say about UNC’s top-five ranking and how that may have played a role in the lackluster first half against the Seminoles: “As far as our top-five rating, we’re ahead of schedule as a team, our recruiting is going really well, we’re playing hard. But we weren’t the top five team in the country. Now part of that was because the Big Ten wasn’t playing yet. Part of it’s because we’d won two or three games, but I didn’t think we handled it well. I thought we were a little comfortable at Florida State instead of confident, and we got hit right in the mouth. And thank goodness we responded to it and came back and still had a chance to win. But I felt like it was a little bit like our response at Wake Forest last year after we’d beaten South Carolina and Miami.” When discussing more specifically what happened, Brown had plenty of blame to go around. While he did give a lot of credit to the team for what he thought was an “unbelievable” second half, he stated that drops and sacks played a sizable role in the offense’s failure to complete drives in the first half. Here’s what Phil Longo had to say about how pass protection may be the biggest issue plaguing his offense right now: “I think probably that’s the area that needs the most improvement. I think we are doing a really good job run blocking. We’re doing a good job in play-action protection. I think our straight drop back protection right now is probably the area of emphasis for the week. And when and how we choose to throw those drop back shots I think will have a lot to do with keeping people off of Sam (Howell). How quickly and what plays I call in the drop-back game with regards to how quickly Sam can get rid of the football. I’ve got to help the O-line and help Sam in that respect, so we’re not sitting there holding.” To say that Sam Howell looked uncomfortable for a large amount of the first half is quite the understatement. It was a rare sight to see Howell standing in a comfortable pocket without the need to scramble away from a defender. It’s really hard to knock Howell too much for some of the questionable decisions that me hade against the Seminoles, as he really hasn’t had a great deal of time to make the best decisions all season long (though it is worth noting that he is still playing really well). The run game has helped a lot when it works, but Longo will absolutely need to dial up some quick pass plays to get opposing defenses to think twice about going into their blitz packages. Turning to the defense, Mack Brown expressed that the biggest issue that the team had Saturday night was the abundance of missed tackles: “Defensively, we missed entirely too many tackles. We missed 19. That’s two weeks in a row we haven’t tackled well against good offensive players. We lost our eye discipline in the first half and guys are playing man coverage. The quarterback’s a good runner, so he’s scrambling, we didn’t contain him very well. And he’s looking downfield and we’re looking at him and they complete balls, which really, really hurt us.” Jay Bateman went into a bit more detail about the tackling woes during his part of the conference: “I think we’ve gotten smarter as football coaches. I don’t think you need to tackle to the ground every play to get good at tackling. When we talk about our kids tackling, it’s not an effort, it’s not a physical, it’s more of an angle and a finish-the-play situation. So we work on our angles and every time the ball is in space, we work on our angles. And so I think that’s the point of emphasis. And another thing is as a coaching staff, we’re committed to it. That’s the first five minutes we spend every day. The more talented team, the more tackles you’re going to miss, but it’s the good misses versus the bad misses and that’s where we’ve got to improve.” It’s hard to combat that tackling has been arguably the biggest issue for this team recently. It’s been even more crippling when it comes to getting sacks, as both Virginia Tech and Florida State kept their quarterbacks upright comfortably. UNC only logged two sacks in the last two games, which is a huge drop-off in production compared to the 10 sacks that they had against Syracuse and Boston College. The Heels are going to have to figure out how to finish plays, or it may be a long day when Raleigh comes to town this Saturday. As. I said in the recap of the game Saturday night, a lot of what happened against the Seminoles is fixable. Players and coaches alike are going to have to do their part in making sure the Wolfpack don’t roll into Kenan Saturday and deliver another big punch in the mouth. It’d be hard to believe that the Tar Heels won’t have a lot of fire going into this game, so we will have to wait and see how this annual dogfight turns out.

Bob Donnan-USA TODAY Sports A horrid first half dooms the comeback attempt. You knew it was too good to be true, right? On ABC primetime for the first time in a long time, in essence their last chance to make some national noise before the Big 10 began their season, against a team that was staring at the bottom. It was all there for the Tar Heels to make a statement that they belonged with their lofty number five rating. Instead, as happens so many times when Carolina Football has a chance to make a statement, this happened: It would almost be impossible to play a worse first half of football than the Tar Heels did. Yet, despite all that, there they were with a chance to at least tie it as the fourth quarter wound down. Fans hoping that the team had put performances like this behind them after last year were sadly mistaken. As you can imagine there’s a lot to go over for the second part of this post, but let’s go ahead and talk about the good first. Winners Javonte Williams: We’ll get into the end of the game in a second, as he was just one part of a bigger issue on that end, but Javonte had a game. 6.6 yards a carry for 119 yards and a rushing score, as well as three catches for 68 yards including a 38-yard TD catch meant that Williams accounted for almost half of the Tar Heels’ offense on the night. Williams continues to be a bowling ball trucking over defenders, and while it was frustrating that coordinator Phil Longo seemed to stick too long to the running game, it’s difficult to fault him for continuing to feed the beast. His touchdown catch with him coming out of the backfield might be something they should use more, maybe? Beau Corrales: Only catching the ball four times and getting 141 yards and a touchdown is a model of efficiency, and it was a reminder that this team has a ton of weapons for Sam Howell to use. In fact, this reminder is what made the play calling so questionable because for a long time in the first half, it just seemed like the Tar Heels were trying to play Virginia Tech again. Beau is another threat teams will have to prepare for, and the senior is hoping to make a name for himself this season as a back door NFL pick. 2nd half defense: When you give up 24 points before halftime (7 were due to a pick six), it’s easy to hang your head and just give up. Instead, FSU only had two series where they even had a chance to get points, their first one was after halftime and the other was deep into the fourth. Both resulted in missed field goal attempts, and the Tar Heels sprinkled in an interception from Trey Morrison in there. It would have been great if the offense and defense had shown up on time, but Bateman’s squad at least gave the offense a chance. Losers The First Half. Just. All of the First Half: That was just bad. Horrifically bad. The offense got off to a decent start, but the drive stalled to the point where Carolina had to punt, and it just went all downhill from there. The blocked punt, the immediate cash in, the three and out, the tipped punt, the sack, the absolute head-scratching fourth down play under center that went nowhere, the bad collapses that allowed FSU another touchdown, the Pick 6, and then finally scoring a touchdown only to give up a complete and utter garbage touchdown before the half ended. That garbage touchdown was the difference in the game, as otherwise the Tar Heels would have completed the comeback and at minimum had a lead with under a minute left. OC Phil Longo seemed to stick to the run too long and didn’t have Howell test the Seminoles deep, the defense got too blitz happy and was always a step late allowing FSU to complete some garbage throws as receivers would break open in the secondary, and special teams...oh, we’ll get to them. It was reminiscent of the first half against Wake Forest last year, and ended up with a similar result that somehow despite that half, the Tar Heels had a chance to at least tie. Credit the Tar Heels for coming back in the second, but we are at the point now where this team just can’t come out flat to start a half of football. Special Teams: So, if you’ve been brought in specifically because either a) special teams weren’t good the previous year or b) the kicker couldn’t be relied on to make a field goal, maybe you should make special teams better or make a field goal. Jovan Dewitt came in this season to try and address a huge weakness of the team last season, the third phase of the game. Instead, FSU got two blocked punts, one that led to a touchdown the next play, and there were zero quality returns either on kickoffs or punts. Meanwhile, Grayson Atkins missed his only field goal attempt of 44 yards, which, you know, was the difference in the game. At this point, it may be worth just bringing Noah Ruggles back out, because at least he has a 49-yard make on his resume. In short, Dewitt is going to have a lot to answer for this week, and while all the coordinators should wear this game, Dewitt bears the biggest responsibility. UNC Receivers: Drops, drops, drops...sing it to “Shots” and you can see where I’m going. Someone more talented than I could make a highlight reel set to that song with all of the crucial drops made by Carolina receivers over the past few games, including Saturday night. The biggest was, of course, Javonte’s drop on fourth down that ended the game but there was one from Corrales, Waltson, and more. It was so bad, it led to Bryan Ives to tweet this horrid fact: North Carolina has dropped 6 passes on 32 targets on 3rd or 4th down this season.That is a drop rate of 19%.Yeesh.— Bryan Ives (@awaytoworthy) October 18, 2020 Carolina’s receivers have got to start helping their quarterback, because this is beyond laughable. Honorable Mentions You can’t call Sam Howell a winner based on that first half, which included the pick six and several times where he just seemed to hesitate getting rid of the ball. That said, he graded out as the best quarterback of the week, mostly based on a terrific second half performance that would have been even better had it not been for the drops. 20-36 for 374 and 3 TD’s is a great night, and had his receivers just helped him out a wee bit more, it would have been a performance all of college football would have been talking about...Chazz Surratt probably had the most “former quarterback playing linebacker” game of his career, being virtually invisible against the Seminoles unless he was missing making a sack. Overall, Jay Bateman may need to retool the way he’s using pressure because, right now, it’s not working for his guys up front...Garrett Waltson is starting to see some real play as a target, snagging not one but two passes, and if defenses keep playing Carolina’s threats tight, he should see his share go up more.