The 2013-14 North Carolina football season is already three games old, and coach Larry Fedora isn’t satisfied with the progress of his team.
The Tar Heels simply aren’t where they expected to be — 1-2, 0-1 ACC headed into a home game against East Carolina on Saturday.
Though most talk in the preseason and early weeks of the season has centered around UNC’s need for defensive improvements, Fedora spent most of Monday telling the media that he wasn’t pleased with his offense.
“We’re not playing as well offensively, we’re just not playing as well, it’s as simple as that,” Fedora said. “It would be easy if it was just one thing. If it was one thing, then we’d get that one thing corrected, but there’s a lot of things involved in it. We’re still just not gelling as an offense yet.”
In the first half of the 28-20 loss to Georgia Tech, the Tar Heels appeared to be firing on all cylinders, putting up two touchdowns in the first quarter and adding another a short time into the second quarter.
But in the second half, UNC failed to add to its 20-14 halftime lead, and eventually saw it slip away. The Tar Heels failed to convert any of their four third down conversions after completing four of six in the first half.
“Everybody’s got to get on the same page,” quarterback Bryn Renner said. “We have spurts. We had a great first half, and then second half we didn’t score a touchdown, and that’s frustrating. We know we can do it, but we’ve just got to be on all cylinders.”
As the game wore on, production slowed on all fronts, and after amassing 257 total offensive yards in the first half, the Tar Heels only managed to gain 62 more yards after halftime.
Fedora hasn’t hidden his displeasure with the running game recently. Against Georgia Tech, UNC only put up 101 rushing yards compared to the Yellow Jackets’ 324.
