‘Drake was Drake’ as UNC beat South Carolina. And now it looks like he has plenty of help

By the numbers it was something of an ordinary game for Drake Maye, the North Carolina quarterback who “only” threw for 269 yards here on Saturday night in a 31-17 victory against South Carolina, “only” ran for 25 more and “only” accounted for two touchdowns.

Only all that for Maye — regular numbers for him, for a change — and still one of his most memorable nights at UNC. Maybe the most memorable, for now, if this is just the beginning of what the Tar Heels hope it is.

For once, Maye didn’t need to set passing records. He didn’t need to run for his life, leaping over defenders while fighting for extra yards, or points. He wasn’t tasked with leading an offense forced to score constantly, given UNC’s defensive woes that had gone from bad to worse in recent seasons.

“Drake was Drake,” UNC coach Mack Brown said after his team’s victory — after the catharsis of an emotional week and an emotional night, one that had Brown dancing away in the locker room, wearing a No. 100 jersey, the number signifying the games he’s won at UNC over his two head coaching tenures.

That “Drake was Drake,” in Brown’s folksy retelling, was the least surprising thing about the Tar Heels’ performance Saturday night. We knew Maye would be Maye, or least could count on it with a great degree of certainty. It was everything else, though, previously unknown about this UNC team that was the rightful cause of so much uncertainty and doubt entering Saturday.

Questions answered

These were some of the questions: How would the Tar Heels compensate for the absence of Tez Walker, the transfer wide receiver who continues to dangle in NCAA eligibility purgatory? Could the defense really, finally, truly take a step forward, for real this time? And would it? Would a reliable running game develop?

It’s important to offer the qualification that this was but one game. And who knows how good, or not, South Carolina turns out to be. Yet the answers UNC provided over the course of three-plus hours inside Bank of America Stadium either portend great things in the coming months, or will be remembered as one of the greatest teases in the Tar Heels’ more-cursed-than-not recent history.

“We’re growing up,” Brown said.

“The sky’s the limit,” said Maye, who met with reporters while wearing Walker’s jersey so Walker’s name was across Maye’s chest, a public show of support for a player Brown and his players believe has been wronged. And if Walker, thought to be UNC’s most talented receiver, does return? Without him, Maye completed 24 of his 32 attempts, with those two touchdowns and two interceptions — one of them landing in a defender’s arms off of a deflection.

Maye being Maye, he couldn’t talk for too long without taking a self-deprecating shot at himself.

“I tried to do my best to let ‘em back in,” he said of his two interceptions, but that quip came after his brief analysis of the Tar Heels’ defense, which was the story of the night for UNC.

“How ‘bout them boys tonight?” Maye asked.

Indeed. How ‘bout them?

Defense much improved

UNC finished the entirety of the 2022 season with 17 sacks, and then had nine Saturday. The Tar Heels often tackled a year ago as though they had an aversion to the act, and to be sure there were enough lapses against South Carolina that Brown and defensive coordinator Gene Chizik will be able to provide some motivational material in film sessions. But not nearly as much as usual.

Unless, well — unless this turns into the new usual for the Tar Heels, who not only just won the kind of game they’ve often lost in recent years, but won it convincingly; probably with more conviction than the final margin indicated.

A rare early statement

When was the last time the Tar Heels won a game of this magnitude, on this kind of national stage, to start the season? Take your time and think. UNC has not been without opportunities over the past decade or so.

There was the trip to Blacksburg to start the 2021 season, where Sam Howell’s Heisman aspirations lasted just longer than the final note of Metallica’s “Enter Sandman” as Virginia Tech ran onto the field. UNC began that season ranked 10th nationally but then fell flat, to put it kindly.

There was the trip to the Georgia Dome in Atlanta to start the 2016 season, when UNC was ranked 16th after winning 11 games the previous season. The season-opening game against Georgia proved a harbinger of things to come, and soon enough the program fizzled under Larry Fedora.

There was another trip to Atlanta to start the 2010 season, and a defeat against LSU while some of UNC’s best players remained back in Chapel Hill at the beginning of a years-long, multi-pronged NCAA investigatory saga. The mere thought is enough to send grizzled UNC fans into PTSD-induced fits.

Last season began as well as any since 2015, with nine victories in the first 10 games. And then four consecutive defeats that suggested, like those aforementioned season-opening defeats of years past, that UNC simply wasn’t ready for primetime.

“Big games, we probably haven’t really won many of them since Coach Brown has been here,” said Tar Heels linebacker Cedric Gray, referring to the second of Brown’s tenures in Chapel Hill. “So for us to kind of come in our first big game of the season versus an SEC opponent, to get the win is definitely very huge.”

The Tar Heels held South Carolina to but a field goal in the second half, and stopped the Gamecocks on downs after both of Maye’s interceptions. After becoming something of a national punchline the past two seasons, UNC’s defense finally played up to its considerable level of talent. It’d been a long wait, given the recruiting hype that’d long surrounded the Tar Heels.

Afterward, Gray offered a prediction, which given he and his teammates’ performance sounded more like a warning: “I only see us going up,” he said. “... We’re not going backwards.”