The Tar Heels near rock bottom, lose 41-19 to ECU

This was the final sentence in last week’s recap here at Tar Heel Blog:

If the Tar Heels don’t look better against East Carolina next week, things are not going to be pretty in 2018.

Things are not going to be pretty in 2018.

Last week, the Tar Heels’ defense was the one thing you could really look at as a positive. After this week, that’s gone too. UNC were completely outplayed in every facet of the game as they were destroyed by East Carolina 41-19.

UNC actually had a somewhat decent first drive, but eventually that stalled out and they had to settle for a field goal. That would be the story for most of the first half. In those first two quarters, the Nathan Elliott-led offense failed to score touchdowns. In the second half, they just failed to score.

While the defense managed to get stops last week, that just did not happen much today. The Pirates managed to go 11-19 on third downs. That allowed them to rack up 510 yards of offense for the game.

UNC had leads on a couple different occasions, but they were never going to be able to keep up with both sides of the ball playing like they were. The Tar Heels were down two going into the second half, but ECU steadily pulled away over the final two quarters.

The aforementioned Elliott went 22-38 for 219 yards. After last week’s four interceptions, he managed to throw none this week, but still did not look any better. Cade Fortin ened up replacing him in garbage time.

Elsewhere on the offense, Antonio Williams looked good, going for 96 yards on 16 carries. However because nothing was fun about this game, he was ejected in the first half for a targeting penalty.

Jordan Brown went for 59 yards and a touchdown, while Anthony Ratliff-Williams had four catches for 84 yards.

The genuine lone bright spot in this game was Freeman Jones. The Tar Heels’ kicker went 4-4 on field goal attempts, making three kicks over 40 yards.

Some corner of Carolina fandom were already antsy and ready to make coaching changes after last week. Now, there’s going to a whole lot more jumping on that train. Larry Fedora’s seat in the football office is going to be getting quite a bit hotter.