We don't suck, but that's all we know.

Yes, we crushed UNC like we should have last year. It was almost a complete domination. Our passing game looked alive, our running game like it should, and our defense pulled themselves out of the dirt and shut them down. Now that we have all of our positive thoughts out of the way, I'm going to go ahead and drop my realistic perspective.

It was just UNC. This is a UNC that very nearly lost to UConn (and probably should have). This is a UNC that lost all of its receivers, but had to keep T.J. Yates, who is a strong candidate for the worst quarterback in the ACC.

Yes, I may be acting like a Negative Nancy, but I'd be a disingenuous ass if I celebrated now seeing as I've been the biggest UNC skeptic around this whole season.

I'm glad to know I was correct when I said that CPJ would snap off Davis's proverbial football weiner like a panda snatching bamboo; however, UNC was even more fortuitous in their W's last year and sufferend some pretty big personnel hits along the way to this season. I never ranked UNC in our blogpoll ballots and for good reason - they aren't that good of a team, and that's that.

While lots of things came together this weekend, our red zone offense is still alarmingly bad. Right now, a team like VPI scares the crap out of me. Ask Nebraska or any other team that can only add points in multiples of 3 (which, sadly enough, we are having trouble doing) - you are going to lose close games if you cannot squeeze every possible point out of TD opportunities when they present themselves. We are currently 100th in RZO right now according to NCAA stats and that, ladies and gentlemen, is not going to cut it.

I left us ranked 20th. While I may have others ranked too high and can't quite get my teens organized - I'm confident that we are not playing on a higher level than 20th.

I told Winfield after the Miami game, "we are this close to being a good team." Between our stacked backfield, our extremely talented secondary and all the other good parts about our team, there is very little standing between us and some serious glory. Some of the problems were addressed this weekend: praise goes to Wommack for putting us back in a scheme that really lets our D shine even though I suspect CPJ had a lot to do with it, our A-Backs (and receivers and tackles to some extent) for remembering how important clockwork blocking is in this offense, and to Josh Nesbitt for bringing it all together for the passing game. I've already lauded Josh Monday's post, but I think that he has been playing at a level above everyone else on this team so far this season with no credit whatsoever. Sure, up until UNC his play seemed very up and down; however, I think that was a product of the offense in general, not Josh himself. By the end of this season I think it will be more than clear to everyone that he really is the MVP of this team. 

It will be very interesting to see what we are looking like with another 2 games under our belt. We definitely are not 'there' yet, and if Saturday's performance was as good as it's going to get, we aren't going to be very happy with the results of this season. Maybe I just have no respect for UNC, but how can you? Edit: This is where I would insert a video, if i had one, of that ridiculously botched snap that sailed past Yates's head which Derrick Morgan recovered. The ball, not the head.

Can we continue to improve and be ready to take on this season's biggest challenge? Mississippi State and Florida State will hardly be pushovers, but if we continue to trend upwards (and start scoring some damn touchdowns from within the 20), we will be the team that everyone knew we could be during the preseason and get a little revenge when Homecoming rolls around.