2018 College Football Previews: North Carolina Tar Heels
North Carolina Tar Heels
Location: Chapel Hill, NC
Coach: Larry Fedora (43-34) 7th Season at North Carolina
Stadium: Kenan Memorial Stadium (Capacity 51,000)
CSJ Projections:
12th: ACC (6th Atlantic Division)
5th: North Carolina
68th: FBS
71st: Division I
2017 In a Sentence: North Carolina struggled to keep opposing offenses off the board and struggled to put points on the board which lead to a paltry 3-9 record. There was no Mitchell Trubisky and company to get into an offensive track meet as they could in 2016.
Biggest Shoes to Fill: LB Cayson Collins Despite a below average defense, one of the more consistent performers on that side of the ball was linebacker Cayson Collins. Collins was second on the team in tackles and spurred the team to a win against Pitt with 6 tackles and a 66 yards fumble recovery.
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Key Player: DE Malik Carney. Rising senior Malik Carney was another bright spot on the UNC defense. The defensive end led the team in tackles for loss with 12 and sacks with 5.5 to go along with 57 tackles. With another year of experience under his belt, the rising senior should improve on all of those numbers and cause a lot of disruptions in the opposing offenses’ backfields
Fearless Prediction: North Carolina may well wind up as the worst team in the ACC this year. They do not seem to have many bright spots on the offensive side of the ball and will again struggle to keep points off the board. They may even be a candidate for the dreaded FCS upset when Western Carolina comes to town on November 17th.
Originally from LaMoure, North Dakota, Kent is a 1996 graduate of North Dakota State University. His prior writing experience is over 15 years having previously worked with D2football.com, I-AA.org, and College Sporting News before coming to College Sports Journal in 2016. His main focus is college football is the Missouri Valley Football Conference within the Division I FCS. And in 2017, he began also to look at the FBS Group of Five conferences of the American Athletic, Conference USA, Mid-American, Mountain West, and Sun Belt.
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