What's to love & hate from UNC football's win over App. State football

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Visit us at capitalfinancialusa.com. This is the Adam Gold Show. Which of the following four fan bases should be happiest today? And we threw out North Carolina, NC State, East Carolina, and App State. They played in two of the most wild games in really and I mean like not East Carolina. NC State was not a wild game was wild finish crazy finish.

Nothing though compares to what I saw at Kid Brewer Stadium. Adam Smith inside Carolina. He joins us.

First of all, my friend, I appreciate your time. It was nice to see you a couple weeks ago at the Wyndham. Let me just ask you, have you ever seen anything quite like that at the Rock on Saturday? First of all, it was great to see you too, A.G. It's always a pleasure when we saw each other in Greensboro a couple weeks ago. I mean, I don't know what 63-61.

It was wild and it was chaotic and it was frenetic and it was fantastic. I mean, what a game. I don't know if I have seen one like that. That's a good question.

I've been around a while, but I don't know if I've seen one like that. I mean, 40 points and the UNC gives up 40 points in the fourth quarter and still wins. How about that? Six touchdowns. First team ever to allow six touchdowns in the fourth quarter.

And they won, which is remarkable. You know how it is, you cover a game like that, you're just trying to make some sense of it afterward. We were counting it up and I was like, I've got nine touchdowns in the last 12 minutes of the game. Like, combine nine touchdowns. I mean, my goodness. It's like your eyes are spinning. You know what I'm saying?

Just unbelievable. With as many positives as can be taken from the game for North Carolina. And I want I don't actually let's start with positives. They scored forget about the last touchdown, which they shouldn't have scored because that would have that would have ended the game. But they score 56 points.

Josh Downs isn't playing. So the fact that they scored and they didn't get great performances out of the two freshmen star running backs. So how do you, you know, what's what's your takeaway with the overall offense scoring that many points against what I thought was a competent defense at App State, at least before the game. So let's let's discuss that part of this first. I have a million takeaways.

Tell Dennis to clear off like 30 minutes here. I just walked in from Chapel Hill to so like I'm fresh off talking to the players, right? Well, yeah, positive. I mean, you're talking about you don't have your if you're the Tar Heels, you don't have your best offensive weapon in Josh Downs is also your most experienced offensive weapon in the junior. He's been around and all these guys making plays with the exception of Kamari Morales at tight end are freshmen and sophomores, including the guy who plays quarterback, who's pretty good.

Drake May, just unreal. But like, you know, that's I think they scored on offense. If you take out the the the onside kick touchdown, they scored seven touchdowns and they were by seven different players. Yeah. You know, there's we talked to my colleague in fact, Carolina, Ross Martin, the big dog, and I, we talked about it yesterday on a little video, you know, waning guard type video. But we talked about the contrast that you saw when Phil Longo, UNC's offensive coordinator, came in and talked to us yesterday. And then Jean Chiswick, the defensive coordinator, I mean, it couldn't have been more stark because you got, you know, good chipper.

Phil Longo is chipper and Jean Chiswick is trying to pick up the pieces. Yeah. You know, as far as positives, there's a whole bunch on offense. You know, I mean, Drake May looks like a rising star after two games.

Yeah. You know, he's a he's a redshirt freshman. He threw for 352 yards, accounted for four touchdown passes, ran for another, had the moment with Sam Howell in the corner of the end zone that some of us called a passing of the torch. You know, and you mentioned the backs and you're right, Omarian Hampton had the 100 yard game in the opener, but I think he only gained like 17 yards against AB.

George Pedaway did have a few sort of explosive, like good Lord, you know, eye popping moments. There was one touchdown pass he had out of the backfield where he dropped an AB linebacker, just like put him put him on the ground, right move. And it was like, you know, but I mean, Kobe Paysauer at wide out, he's he effectively is the Josh downs replacement at that position in the slot. And he catches eight balls for 92 yards. He had one career catch before Saturday.

So, I mean, you could just go down the list with those guys that the if you add up the career catches of the career yards and then what they did on Saturday, it's just if you're a Carolina fan, you feel you're feeling great about that side of the ball. Right that side of the ball and then we go to the other side of the ball and we saw signs of this against fam you especially in like the first three quarters of the game. Like man, why are they struggling so much with Florida A&M and we knew like they get down 21 7 then they score and it's 30. What was it 38 21 and ended up being 4121 21 and then they could it was a 20-point lead. They couldn't stop them at all.

Like no chance. It was it almost looked like, you know, when at the beginning of games, they'll throw, you know, you'll have offense versus defense and the defense is just supposed to kind of stand there and let the offense do it. That's what it looked like to me.

Yeah, like against the air. Yeah, like I mean, you know, you make a lot of good points. It's it's at one point in the first half app is up 21 7 and it's kind of and they app score touchdowns on their first three possessions. And then what what Mac pointed out yesterday several times and he said no, you know, none of y'all are talking about that was the fact that for one period of the game for for I guess you would call it the middle 30 minutes of the game. Carolina did not give up a point. There was four straight stops on defense that allowed them to go from down 21 7 to a head 4121 going into the fourth quarter. It's a 20-point Carolina lead some of the record crowd at Kid Brewer Stadium, which was great.

By the way, the name was just fantastic some of the record crowd is starting to leave to go on to do other activities because it kind of looks like study. I kind of look like the game was in hand, you know, and like it would you know, the fourth quarter was going to be academic which obviously was anything but but you know, Gene Chiswick used the words implosion. Yeah, which I thought was pretty accurate and perfect storm. I'm not sure what he was talking about there.

But you know, there were a lot of words like that where I'm just got a lot of issues. They get to clean up and you know, as it is as it went Saturday. There were a lot in the secondary where Chase Bryce was able to throw six touchdown passes and you know, app obviously needed every every bit of them and he he delivered when they needed them in and they just got a lot to to try to figure out with Mac. Of course that I have total confidence in Gene Chiswick. He said this yesterday and they are they that from a team, you know, the coaches are stressing that look when a play absolutely had to be made with nine seconds left and UNC clinging to the two-point lead app trying to tie it up on a two-point conversion. Carolina made a play Noah Taylor and Caiman Rucker were able to stop Chase Bryce on a quarterback keeper at the goal line to preserve the win. That's that's one of the things they've been preaching. They you know, yeah when a play had to be made.

They made it you got to hang got to hang on the positives. I think if Bryce pump fakes instead of you know, tucking it I think it'd be pump fakes maybe who's the first guy on that. Maybe he kind of shakes him and is able to get closer to the goal line. But once you know what Taylor was like hanging on for dear life, right? Like, you know, he cut inside of him. But if he pump fakes and maybe Taylor gets less of him, maybe Bryce can get to the goal line.

I don't know. But yes, they made that play the other one Bryce made for them. You know, it wasn't as much overthrown as it was thrown behind the wrong shoulder of the receiver. And if that was if that's a better pass that well, although Carolina probably would have gone down and scored.

Given those 31 seconds. Yeah, I could have won again. I mean that that was that was huge. There were so many of those, you know, I mean app gained 664 yards and lost. Oh my gosh.

I know you don't pay attention to these things. I'm saying this giving you cover even if you do Adam Smith from inside Carolina, but I thought the easiest bet in the world was app and Carolina going over 56 and a half. I didn't think there was a way on this earth that this was not going to get I thought that at the very least both teams would get in the 30s.

Obviously that happened. Yes, both teams got into the six was 3431. I think I think I my pick was 3431 Tar Heels at halftime. I just missed it by by a little bit. Oh my gosh.

All right, real quick before we before we let you go. Georgia State's on the road Georgia State just coming off a pretty convincing loss. I forget against whom but a pretty convincing loss this past Carolina.

So we're at they were in Columbia. Yeah. What's what are your thoughts about this team going forward is are some of these defensive problems. We know the offense is going to be fun is some of these defensive problems are the these correctable. I mean, I mean, yes, they're correctable, you know, I would say after two games, you know, if you're a Carolina fan, like have the have the Pepto Bismol close by, you know, like, you know, well, if you ask those guys, if you ask the players and the coaches, yes, they are correctable.

And obviously they're working very diligently to correct them. They have accountability Sunday and on Sundays, you know, everyone is held accountable for what they did or did not do right. I can tell you, Adam, that Gene Chiswick said he watched the game twice on the way back from Boone and then got up Sunday morning and watched it again.

So, you know, happy Labor Day weekend if you're Gene Chiswick. That's a coach. Yeah. Right.

Right. But yeah, I mean, they're definitely I mean, you I don't I don't see how you can not do anything but improve if you're UNC's defense. And they're two and oh, I mean, it hasn't been the most conventional and convincing of ways. But if they go down to Atlanta and beat another group of five opponents from the Sunbelt, like App State was, they go down there and and win a game they're supposed to win. You know, you're three and oh, and they're off next week.

They have an early open date because they had a week zero game in Notre Dame comes to Chapel Hill on September 24. So, yes, I mean, everything obviously is correctable. We're here. You know, it's early September. Right.

But like there's for the defense, there's only one way to go, I would think. And that's right. And Georgia State. I mean, Georgia State did lose to South Carolina. But I think I think they led that could be wrong. But I think they led that game like 14 to 12 at one point. So, um, but that's the Georgia State team that Carolina played last year and blew out pretty convincingly, somehow went nuts in that one. Nothing's going to be easy, but it'll be fun. Yeah, I think you can pencil that in. It'll be fun. Adam Smith inside Carolina, Adam underscore Smith underscore I see.

That's the way I believe it reads on Twitter. I thank you very much, man. We'll talk to you very soon. Tell the big dog we said hi. I definitely will. Great talking to you, man. You guys be good.

You too. Adam Smith from inside Carolina. Look, we can get caught up in the man. They gave up 61 points. They did score 63. Yeah. And at the end of the day, you won. You won. Maybe that's all it needs. That's all it matters.

Maybe that's all you need. I am Adam Gold. That's Dennis Cox, who is covering this James Taylor song here. This is Don't Let Me Be Lonely Tonight by James Taylor. This is the Isley Brothers. Oh, very nice.

Off their three plus three album. We're getting into our album that people submitted. For those people who remember, a few weeks ago Dennis solicited. If you want to hear an album used as a bump for the entire show, just let Dennis know at the fan rookie and we'll work it out.

I think it's a good idea. Still taking submissions. We'll always take submissions. You want to hear your favorite album? As long as it's not... Has anybody suggested anything by Frank Zappa? Not yet.

Good. Not a Frank Zappa fan? No, I love Zappa, but there's not a lot of it. You can't get to the lyrics really with Zappa.

No. Zappa works blue. NSFW. Not safe for work, Frank Zappa. By the way, the Zappa album Joe's Garage, recommend highly. Highly. Joe's Garage, an outstanding album. Put that on your list.

Let me suggest Joe's Garage as an album. The ACC, without getting into the trope of, let's give the ACC a grade. Because that's sort of silly, although we can certainly do it and mock it as we do it. But I thought for the most part, the ACC did a lot of good things. We had Pitt winning at home by accident over West Virginia. The game winning points on the pick six, which was a gift right through West Virginia's wide receiver's hands, notwithstanding.

Pitt wins at home. Florida State wins really at LSU. It wasn't in Baton Rouge, it was in New Orleans, but that was an LSU home game.

Yeah. Give them a lot of credit for winning that game. Florida State would have probably gotten blown out in years past. But of course, LSU might not be that good. Neither team was ranked. LSU did not start the season ranked. And if LSU is not ranked, they probably ain't good. Because if an LSU team has talent, rank them. Because they're LSU.

Brian Kelly's a really good coach. I just don't know what he was doing. Kicking the extra point to tie it up after a 99 yard drive to get within one with almost no time left on the clock. No, there was no time left on the clock. It made them one second. No, there was no time. Because the play before the touchdown went out of bounds with like one second left.

That's right. So there was no time. You got one play to... You can win the game right here. Don't coaches understand probability? Like probability. What are the chances of you, after having driven 99 yards, getting a two point conversion, you have one play.

So whenever the two point line is like the three yard line. What are the chances of getting it in from the three? Is it 50-50? I think it's greater than that. Let's just say it's less. Let's say it's 45% will play the probability game. What's the probability of you winning in overtime, even in college? It ain't much more.

It's no more than 50. Like give me one play after a 99 yard drive. That was just such a curious decision for me. Anyway, Florida State wins the game. They figure out a way to win the game. They weren't great by any stretch, but they figured out a way to win that game.

That was good. Miami crushed Bethune-Cookman, yeah. Clemson crushed Georgia Tech, sort of.

They ran away late. It was 14-10 in the third quarter after Georgia Tech scores a touchdown. And they could not block Georgia Tech up front.

And so I texted a very good friend of mine who understands these things. And this was when it was still 14-10. I said, is Clemson's offensive line a problem or does Georgia Tech simply not respect DJU's passing ability to the point where they ain't worried about it?

And the answer was yes. That's a bad combination for Clemson because Georgia Tech isn't that good. So if you're Clemson and you have a hard time blocking offensive, defensive linemen, and because of that, the other team also, or on top of that, the other team doesn't have any respect for your starting quarterback, you got a problem offensively. Now, it all changed when they brought the freshmen in. That kid's good.

Really, really good. Matter of time. Matter of time before Clemson's offense changes when that guy gets to play more. There's no way Dabo Swinney, he's going to love DJU for as long as he can.

And then when it comes down to winning time, number two is going to be in the game. And if I'm NC State, I saw this on Twitter from a good friend, James. He hopes DJU plays well enough to still play against State because if DJU plays against State, the Wolfpack have a pretty good chance. If the other guy plays, Clemson's offense is now good. Yeah, I think Clemson's offense will be good. So that was sort of encouraging for the Tigers, but Virginia Tech losing at Old Dominion, BC losing at home to Rutgers, Syracuse pounding Louisville. There's enough not good in ACC weekend one that was sort of disturbing. But that's where we are. The Florida State win was excellent. Pitt survived. Clemson does look like they've got some high end. This is the Adam Gold Show.