"The NFL's 33rd Team" is Fraudulent

N.C. State finishes the regular season Saturday with a match up against “The ​NFL’s 33rd team​.”

The NFL’s 33rd team is massively underachieving this year, which on its face is surprising, considering they are an NFL team playing college football.

They enter today’s contest effectively eliminated from bowl contention, rated somewhere around the 95th best team in the country, out of 136 teams. Surprising, indeed.

I don’t need to tell you that the NFL’s 33rd team has received a lot of attention this year. The hiring of a tremendous NFL coach generated a lot of excitement in the offseason. Swapping a 74 year old head coach who is “too old” for a 73 year old head coach - who, true, technically is not as old as his predecessor - seems to have not had the desired effect in Chapel Hill so far.

There were signs that this might’ve been a rotten decision from the start. The Board of Trustees reportedly went around Athletic Director Bubba Cunningham - who wanted legitimate candidates, like CFP contender Tulane’s Jon Sumrall - to hire Bill. That was done totally smoothly and above board, and there haven’t been any​ legal issues​ or lawsuits related to that development to speak of.

Yes, the off the field issues have been plentiful. There’s Bill’s 24 year old girlfriend - and business partner? - Jordon Hudson. She’s ​suing media outlets​ in her spare time because she doesn’t like the consequences of her own actions. There’s Bill’s GM, Michael Lombardi, described as “rude” and “nasty,” who is the ​highest paid GM​ in the country documented on USA Today’s salary database. Gotta have it for the 33rd NFL team.

There’s the Hulu documentary that got canned because things around the program were going so poorly. There’s an article from WRAL that came out in early October, with a source telling WRAL that “"There's no culture, no organization. It's a complete disaster." That same article points out that it evidently took several weeks for Belichick to introduce himself to returning players on the team. What?

This is embarrassing. Unthinkable. Unserious. And it's not even close to an exhaustive list of the incompetence happening up the road.

Best of all: we haven’t even touched on the actual performance of the NFL’s 33rd team.

Perhaps you’ll remember a week one matchup so lopsided that Kirk Herbstreit put his headset on his dog to provide commentary:

It’s been rough, to say the least. However, it wouldn’t be intellectually honest of me if I didn’t point out that yes, somehow, UNC does have four wins. Let’s take a look at them:

• An FCS team

• A 10 point win over the 2nd worst team in the sport

• Two ACC wins against the 107th and 118th rated teams in football, per SP+.

  
  

Ah, got it.

If you want a summation of year one of the Belichick era at UNC, this tweet is as relevant today as it was one game into the season:

The Bill Belichick hire has been a perfect fit. Perhaps not in the way that UNC fans originally thought and hoped for. But it has been perfect in the sense that both coach and athletic department merely assumed that showing up would be enough. The Sleeping Giant will awaken, all we have to do is show up. “To seem, rather than to be.”

No matter the year, no matter the coach, no matter the setting: North Carolina football continues to prove that arrogance is the ultimate achilles heel in organized sports. There are no bonus points awarded for media coverage. You can’t build yourself an advantage off headlines or decision making dysfunction. Simply thinking that the right portal recruits will beg to play for you is not a strategy. It is delusion.

That is why North Carolina is getting their teeth kicked in against ESPN’s easiest strength of schedule in the country for a Power 4 team. This thing actually takes work.

Vegas has State right around a 7 point favorite today. That seems low at first glance, but while UNC leadership might not be capable, I'll continue to show reason and logic and give them credit for playing UVA (17-16 in OT) and Duke (32-25 last week) close in two losses.

Billy's boys have made their hay this year defensively. They sit 39th in adjusted EPA/Play defensively. Their front does a great job of mucking things up. Their defensive stats are good on a down to down basis against pass and run, and don’t give up a ton of explosive plays through either medium.

The ​numbers​ don’t fully back up the eye test. I think this is an above average defense that’s been inflated by only playing 4 real quarterbacks on the season. I’m not a big believer in the current form of State’s offense, but there are weaknesses on the back end to exploit. Vegas projects State to get to ~27 points, and I think that’s doable.

That’s an important number to get to, because the season high for UNC’s offense against teams inside of the top 100 of SP+ ratings is 25 points - and that was last week at home against Duke. Before that, it was 18 against Cal. This offensive output is not pretty:

Schedule from ESPN

UNC’s largest problem on offense is that they reportedly paid ~$2M for a quarterback who isn’t good at playing football. Gio Lopez’s season high passing yards in a game is 216. He is 99th nationally in QBR. He stinks.

With how banged up State is defensively, and how porous they’ve been at times, I’d imagine Gio can break that mark today. UNC is 125th nationally in EPA/rush, and State's defense has been very good on a down to down basis stopping the run. I think this fall's on Gio's shoulders.

We have a “good on good” match up with State’s offense and Carolina’s defense, and “bad on bad” with the other two sides. With the trajectory of both of State’s units - and with them getting healthier on Defense but not on offense - I can see this being a slog of a night, similar to FSU and Virginia Tech in game flow.

While not impactful on State’s postseason trajectory, Dave understands the magnitude of this game. He understands this rivalry better than many fans do, and has publicly mentioned several times that his success in this game has allowed him to stay in Raleigh.

I’m not sure Billy Boy gets this. After all, the ​first words​ he really and truly ever spoke were “beat Duke.” I don’t know that Bill and co know how to keep a 4-7 football team with no bowl hopes and an upcoming transfer portal window engaged. I know Dave wants to win this game by 478293 points if he can.

Anything is possible in any rivalry; this one can get absolutely nuts. I was in attendance when a completely cooked Larry Fedora team took one of Dave’s best teams to double overtime in 2018. 2021’s miracle happened. In the past, Gio has happened. You just never know.

But if you want to take the more likely side in this one, the default outcome in this rivalry is turning into “N.C. State wins.” A win tonight would make 5 in a row, 8 out of the last 10, and 14 out of the last 20.

State's got a lot of players who have played in or watched how much this has meant to the program and fans. UNC's heavy transfer portal group I'm sure intuitively understands rivalry, but playing in the most hostile environment of the year, with how cold it is outside, and the portal around the corner...do they care?

I believe the Pack will put the exclamation point on the sentence "UNC football was a joke in 2025." Nearly every element of UNC's program, top to bottom this year, has been fraudulent and disappointing. It's hard to see that stopping now.

Is there a trophy for college teams that beat NFL teams?