Extra Points: Home Base

By Lee Pace

When we were last in the friendly confines of Kenan Stadium, Noah Burnette had made two late-game field goals, Drake Maye scored a touchdown diving across the goal line and set up a fake-run and easy toss into the end zone for a two-point conversion. The Tar Heels escaped Duke with a 47-45 victory, and Carolina students stormed the field.

Ten months can seem like an eternity.

Maye is now off to the NFL and the New England Patriots. Geoff Collins is now running the Tar Heel defense. And Burnette is still laser sharp kicking field goals.

Within those three themes is the essence of the 2024 Carolina football team, one with marked contrasts to the campaign of 2023 that saw the Tar Heels reel off six straight wins and surge into the nation's top 10 in mid-October.

Without a marquee quarterback like Maye or predecessor Sam Howell, the Tar Heels entered the season with an offense built around tailback Omarion Hampton, a blocking front with four new starters and an audition list of quarterbacks, wide receivers and tight ends jockeying to take significant roles.

Their defense was revamped behind the kinetic energy of Collins and a press-man, bring-heat-from-every-angle mindset.

And the special teams were based around Burnette's dependable leg, a year's seasoning with punter Tom Maginnes and a roster deeper and more mature to add ballast to the four key kicking game units.

It all came together last week in the opener at Minnesota. The Tar Heels prevailed 19-17, continuing their first-game success path under Coach Mack Brown versions I and II—they are 13-3 to launch the season from 1988-97 and 2019-present.

It wasn't perfect, and the Tar Heels needed a late-game field-goal miss from an All-Big Ten kicker. But it was a win, on the road, against a solid team in year eight of the Coach P.J. Fleck era. And there were certainly clues to the Tar Heels' impending identity.

"We're a team that's going to run the ball and stop the run," Brown says. "This is the toughest team we've had. We are going to be a physical, running team with play-action. We're going to be a team that stops the run and will be really aggressive on defense. And we want to change games with special teams."

The Tar Heels open their home season at 3:30 p.m. Saturday against Charlotte in the first-ever encounter with the institution in northeast Charlotte that was absorbed into the UNC system in 1965 and today has an enrollment of nearly 30,000 students.

The 49ers began playing football in 2013 as an independent and joined Conference USA in 2015. Their high-water mark (and only winning season) was in 2019 when they went 7-6, played in the Bahamas Bowl under Coach Will Healy (now the running backs coach at Georgia State). Healy was fired after a 1-7 start to the 2022 season and replaced by Biff Poggi, a Duke graduate, longtime successful high school coach in Baltimore, and for three years, an off-field analyst to Coach Jim Harbaugh at Michigan.

The Charlotte series was scheduled in July 2015 when Athletic Director Bubba Cunningham and then head coach Larry Fedora were planning future schedules by getting away from paying teams what had become prohibitive guarantees for one-off visits to Chapel Hill in favor of home-and-home games against teams within the Tar Heels' mid-Atlantic recruiting area. Series against App State, Old Dominion and Georgia State fit that category as well.

The 49ers are 0-1, having lost their opener 30-7 to James Madison. They bring to Chapel Hill a number of familiar faces, including players Ja'Qurious Conley, Dontae Balfour and Justin Olson and coaches Tim Brewster, Dre Bly, Tim Cross, Justin Sanders and Ty Greenwood.

Max Johnson was anointed to start at quarterback versus Minnesota by virtue of his experience having played lots of SEC football at both LSU and Texas A&M, but he was injured in the third quarter and is out for the rest of the year. So, the offense now pivots to sophomore Conner Harrell, who lacks experience but has speed and athletic ability in spades.

"It's next man up," Brown says. "Conner is really good. He's got it. It's there in him, and we've got to help him and make sure he does what he does best. Every defense is going to stack the box to stop Omarion, so it's up to us to figure out how to counteract that."

The Tar Heels started four new players on the offensive line, including true freshman Aiden Banfield at left guard.

"I was impressed with the O-line," Brown says. "They were physical and did not have a penalty. Banfield is one of the most violent players we have. For him to play as a true freshman is impressive. He had a sore ankle and I'm proud of the toughness he showed."

Collins was delighted the Tar Heels ran some 20 players through the rotation, forced five 3-and-out possessions and held Minnesota to 15 yards rushing in the second half. He noted that linebackers often get the attention but lauded the play of interior linemen like Travis Shaw, Jahvaree Ritzie, Kevin Hester and Josh Harris.

"They are the ones who make the magic happen," Collins said. "Watching those four the way they defended the run the entire night, it was impressive. Some of those clips are clinic tapes on how to play defensive tackle in big-time college football. And those were really good players they were going against."

And then there was the kicking game. Brown has been frustrated since his 2019 return to Carolina that the Tar Heels have been merely average in special teams—some bright spots, some mishaps, a lot of going nowhere really. He relished delivering an inventory of kicking game highlights from the opener.

"Special teams were the best we've had," Brown says. "Noah was 4-4, all right down the middle and long. Tom averaged 51 yards a kick. Ty Adams and Christian Hamilton did a great job holding up their gunners, and Alijah Huzzie can be dangerous on punt returns. Liam Boyd was 3-4 on kick-offs into the end zone, and on the one they returned, we had a true freshman, Malcolm Ziglar, make a great stop. And Nate McCallum was one block away from returning a kick-off for a touchdown. We talked about dominating in the kicking game, and that's what we did."

Now the stage is set for the Tar Heels' return to Kenan Stadium. Check out the new Bell Tower Block Party outside the stadium, grab an IP3 cheesesteak and a Maple View Farms ice cream and enjoy the show.

Chapel Hill writer Lee Pace (Carolina '79) has been writing about Tar Heel football under the "Extra Points" banner since 1990 and reporting from the sidelines on radio broadcasts since 2004. Write him at leepace7@gmail.com and follow him @LeePaceTweet.

Players Mentioned

Ty Adams

Liam Boyd

Noah Burnette

Christian Hamilton

Omarion Hampton

Conner Harrell

Alijah Huzzie

Max Johnson

Drake Maye

Jahvaree Ritzie

Travis Shaw

Malcolm Ziglar

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