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It’s “talkin’ season,” as Steve Spurrier used to call it, and to riff on an old NASCAR adage, “if you ain’t provokin’, you ain’t talkin’.” In the wake of the ACC’s media event last week, pundits start rolling out various predictions and hot takes. Al on Monday highlighted ESPN’s most aggressive agent provocateur, Paul Finebaum, calling Belichick an embarrassment and suggesting he retire. USA Today predicted UNC would finish 14th in the conference. Preseason rankings (talkin’ starters) for head coach, probable starting QB, likely place of finish: UNC consistently appears somewhere in the bottom five teams in the ACC.
David Hale, who collaborated with Andrea Adelson to publish this startling piece heading into the TCU game last season, also dabbles in the editorial side of things. He took the forecasts one step further and had this to say on his Substack about UNC’s prospects next season.
– TIER 8 –
16. Boston College Eagles
17. North Carolina Tar Heels
BC’s roster just looks pretty bleak. And UNC… I think if Travis Burgess can win the QB job and develop quickly under Bobby Petrino, there’s a shot. But if Billy Edwards is your QB with the rest of that roster and the schedule they have this year… I can see it getting very bad, very quickly.
That’s dead last in the conference.
Even the computers have a hard time knowing what to make of UNC heading into next season. One model projects a good defense ranking 36th by season’s send. Another, just as reputable, sees it likely to finish as one of the worst among P4 teams at 93rd. Similarly, talkin’ season is all over the map on the Tar Heels’ prospects as well.
So, there are a number of ways to think about the upcoming season. That includes not thinking about it at all, which is the strategy currently employed by some members of my family. There are the best-case scenarios for the optimists among us who want to live in hope. There’s the worst-case for the pessimists who prefer to expect disaster, as a buffer to experiencing the sort of disappointment we all suffered last September. There’s the space in between where the realists like to hang out.
Frankly, it’s all vibes at this point, and after last season’s tire fire of a season, the vibes aren’t vibing for most. Most Tar Heel fans are in “show me” mode. Still, all we’ve got between now and the opening kick in Dublin are our feelings about next season’s prospects. A case can be made the program shows up against TCU unexpectedly good in the same manner they showed up last season unexpectedly bad. A case can be made that a greatly improved but young team struggles to get to 6-6 against a much tougher schedule. A case can be made the wheels fall off entirely, which is where David Hale seems to think things end up.
Where are your feelings on that? What’s your best case for next season? Worst case? Most likely result?
