How surprised were you at UNC’s win over USC on Saturday??

The Associated Press Top 25 is out. Can I get a drum roll, please? There you go.

There's your drum roll. No real surprise at the top. Georgia 1, Michigan 2, Alabama 3. Florida State is up to 4.

From where were they? 8. Ohio State is 5. Notre Dame is 10.

10th-rank Notre Dame will be at NC State on Saturday at noon at Carter-Finley Stadium. Carolina is up to 17. Duke is at 21. Colorado, by the way, 22. Clemson, 25.

That is quite the tumble. Like, wait a second. They did not lose to a bunch of marshmallows. Duke is good.

Where have you been? Duke is 21. Clemson is 25. Carolina is up to 17. Let's check in with our friend Al Hood from Tar Heel Blog.

Appreciate your time, man. Big good win. Very good win over South Carolina. Did it surprise you that my biggest takeaway was, man, Tar Heel's defense looks pretty good.

I still can't believe what I saw. I mean, we're about 72 hours later, and I'm still somewhat shocked at just how good everything ended up for Carolina. I mean, in the end, if you think about it, if you'd actually dug into South Carolina and you realize that Rattler was not a running quarterback and that they had no running game to speak of last year, and you have months to game plan for it, then it puts it into a little bit of a different perspective. But how many times did Carolina know exactly what the team is going to do to them, and they still couldn't stop them? It really is a credit to the defense. It's credit to the players who executed it, and it's credit to the game plan that Chiswick and his staff had. They just put pressure on Rattler and just continuously made him work for every yard that he got. Yeah, Al Hood from Tar Heel Blog is joining us here on the Adam Gold show.

AlBHood on Twitter. The thing that changes it for me, though, is that it wasn't just that North Carolina was good against the run. It was that they really eliminated the run from South Carolina's equation.

20 rushing yards on 18 rushing attempts. Kick the sacks out, because the sacks make it seem it was negative two rushing yards. But it was the fact that South Carolina had one rush, maybe two rushes, in excess of five yards.

There was nothing there. I was going to say, a couple of those excess rushes were from Rattler, who was scrambling for his life. By the second half, I'm trying to remember correctly, and part of that was to the fact that they were down by 17, but by the time Carolina got up by 17, South Carolina could just completely abandon that run game. Which, of course, makes it easier on the defense, because then you know you're not going to be running, and that's when they started piling up all the sacks. Again, Mack has said it.

You've played the clip a dozen times. We're at the beginning of year two under Chiswick. The guys that are playing have the experience of playing. It is starting to show, and they've got some new guys on that line that have experience and that have put that push. It took a lot of pressure off of the secondary, which was huge.

Yeah, look, sometimes it's hard to know how guys are listed. Seriously, because guys who are linebackers are really edge rushers. They're not necessarily defensive linemen like Rucker was good. Gainer, who had some good moments and some, like, okay, what were you thinking moments? Cedric Gray was good, whistle to whistle. He was just great all game long. Power Echols, also a very good player. There just were a lot of guys that maybe people weren't as familiar with, but hadn't been used to seeing them be impact players like this.

There's just a lot of guys like that that just jumped off the screen to me. But there are still the issues in coverage, which I guess are understandable based on new corners, young players, but that's got to get corrected probably before this week. We'll keep you updated on your Carolina Panthers. We're talking about locker room insight, exclusive interviews, and, of course, in-depth looks at all of the Panthers wins. Touchdown, Carolina!

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See store for details. Yeah, I mean, they're going to be playing. They're obviously going to be playing a team that now knows where Carolina's weakness is.

I mean, it's not like it was that hard to know what Carolina's weakness was. But, App State's going to be playing a junior college quarterback that came in in the second half last weekend. Didn't throw for much, but when he threw, it was for touchdowns. And Rattler, even though he didn't throw for a passing touchdown, knew where the weakness was on that defense. Holloway was the guy who seemed to continually just picked on no matter where he ended up getting thrown at on the field.

He was just thrown at. So, that's where the biggest adjustment on the secondary is going to be. A lot of that had to do with the last second adjustment they had to do. You've got an experienced cornerback that's all of a sudden out for the season, and you find that out the week of, and you're having to adjust on the fly.

So, I wouldn't be surprised if they figure out a different way to kind of hide Holloway a little bit. He thought he was going to be coming in for just a few plays, and he ends up having to play the whole game. But, obviously, the secondary's problems haven't been totally corrected. But, glass half full, like I said, they didn't get a pick.

That's the empty part, half full. They also didn't allow for a passing touchdown. Rattler was in second, third, and fourth and longs, and for the most part, didn't convert them. Last year, you couldn't say that. Al Hood from Tar Heel Blog is joining us here from SB Nation on the Adam Gold Show. On the other side of the ball, North Carolina goes into a game without their two best receivers.

Of course, you and I have at least chatted about this on Twitter, or X, whatever we're calling it now. I wish, and I said this before, and you were privy to the conversation, I wish that North Carolina would have just thumbed their nose at the NCAA and put Tez Walker on the field. He's going at some point to be eligible. I don't think the NCAA can get around that. He's going to be allowed to play at some point this season.

Hopefully, it's this week. I give the kid just a ton of credit for handling it with class, and his parents and his grandmother were at the game on Saturday night. I just wish they would have been able to watch him play. I 100% agree with you. I posted an article.

I've had that opinion for the longest time. I just waited until Friday to post it because I wanted to give the NCAA as much time to actually have him play. Then obviously, once it became clear that wasn't going to happen, I put it out there too. The thing is, Carolina has fought the NCAA before. I'm not going to re-litigate what happened the last decade.

A very short version of it is that you referenced 2010 earlier. Once they got a new chancellor, once Bubba Cunningham came in and they switched their strategy to where they were saying, Okay, you know what? Forget this. We're going to actually fight this.

This is not what the rules should be. Once they changed tactics and went on the offense and stopped just saying, Okay, fine. We'll cooperate.

Whatever you'll do. They won. Now, what I will say about this, and obviously when you put something out there, you're going to hear the other side of it from people who actually, believe it or not, will be rational online. The one strike against it, and I do get where Carolina is coming from on this, believe, and someone posted this on Twitter, there was a similar situation with Memphis in 2019 with Weissman. They assumed it was BS. Penny was going to play him anyway. He ended up being out for longer because the NCAA was upset that they had their noses thumbed at it. And you take that with the fact that the final appeal isn't going to be from NCAA bureaucrats.

It's going to be from actual people that work in the college game. You can understand why Carolina wants to go through every single part of the process and make it look like they're not trying to thumb their nose at the process, but call to the call to why Tez's situation is ridiculous. I agree with you.

He's going to play anyway. Why make him sit on the sideline to where he can't play in front of his friends and family? I'm just saying I hear the other side of the argument.

No, I understand, and I agree with that. I just think that at some point it becomes about the player, not the program, and North Carolina's history has been to protect the program at the expense of the player. Until, as you point out, Bubba Cunningham somehow managed to convince the NCAA that, you know what, those classes, they might not have been rigorous, but they were classes. Let's also make sure, let's pay attention to the rhetoric that's come out of Carolina. Yes, they should have played them, but it's not like Carolina has been sitting back and just saying, oh, well, we'll just wait to see whatever the NCAA does.

We'll see whatever it does. They talked extensively with media members to where they got the rant from Sean McDonough on the ABC broadcast about it. Mack has said something about it in every public appearance that he's done. Drake May came out with the Jersey reverse saying Tez Walker on it to make it very clear where he stood on it. There's social media, the Carolina players are saying free Tez, so they're not putting a button on this issue. They're just saying, hey, we're going to do this. And then yesterday in his press conference, Mack did refer to legal action. For whatever reason he isn't, and I think you called this out, and I know Judge Bob Orr said something about it too, that if for whatever reason he gets appealed, that's when they're going to go through the legal route. So Carolina is not exactly staying quiet on this to say, oh, yeah, whatever the NCAA decides. Should they do more?

Is it there's still that program over the player protection aspect? Yes, and I fully acknowledge that, but they're also not exactly being quiet about it either. No, they're not. And Mack Brown a couple of weeks ago specifically called out Charlie Baker as though Charlie Baker is making this ruling. But I'm sure Charlie Baker knows who would be making the ruling, and I'm sure that he has his phone number or her phone number.

Yeah. And a call should be I just don't there's no logical reason why he's not eligible at all. Just as I can't I can't come up with a logical one. And I know it's been pointed out, well, he shouldn't have taken recruiting visits to Penn State and Rutgers. Last I checked, both of those places were closer than Kent, Ohio.

But it doesn't really matter. We're just at this point now, we're just looking for he should be eligible. End of discussion on all of that. All right. Well, Tar Heels have two difficult games coming up, App and Minnesota.

And then the trip to Pitt should be an interesting month. Al Hood, I appreciate your time. We'll talk again very soon, my friend. Sounds good, Adam. Talk to you later. You got it.