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North Carolina Presents Notre Dame With A Unique, And Difficult Challenge

North Carolina presents Notre Dame with a very unique challenge, one it hasn't faced in awhile.

Notre Dame head coach made an interesting comment about North Carolina's offense during his press conference prior to the matchup between the Fighting Irish and Tar Heels.

"This is like any other offense," Kelly said. "It's rhythm, right, and the rhythm comes from balance. If you have balance within your offense you have rhythm, if you don't have balance then you lack the rhythm necessary."

Kelly is correct in the context for which his comment was made. Balance is key on offense and getting an offense out of rhythm is important for a defense. 

North Carolina is not, however, like any other offense in regards to its talent, production and the challenges it puts on a defense. Kelly was not saying the Tar Heels were like every other opponent in this area, he was talking more big picture, but when you dive into what makes the Tar Heels so good on offense you see a unique challenge in front of the Irish defense.

Much of the focus on North Carolina surrounds quarterback Sam Howell, but what fuels the Tar Heel offense is its ground game. As good as Notre Dame has been at running the ball this season, a case could be made that North Carolina is even better.

The two teams have identical yards per game numbers (233.5 per game), but the Tar Heels have the edge in yards per rush (5.6 to 5.2). North Carolina has two backs (Javonte Williams, Michael Carter) on pace for more than 1,000 rushing yards in the regular season.

Notre Dame has one of the nation's best run defenses, and the Irish have faced some outstanding rushing offenses during its current dominant stretch of run defense that dates back to last November. It has not, however, faced a one-two bunch like Williams and Carter.

Twice this season the Tar Heel backfield duo has topped 100 yards in the same game, with the high water mark coming in a 56-45 win over Virginia Tech in which Carter racked up 214 yards and two scores while Williams went for 169 yards and two more scores. Williams has gone for at least 101 yards in five of the team's last six games, and Carter has gone over 100 yards in three of the team's eight games.

What makes North Carolina such a hard team to defend is that you must be prepared to handle that elite run game while also guarding against a wide receiver unit that might also have the best one-two punch the Irish have faced this season (Dyami Brown, Dazz Newsome). Then there is Howell, who executes North Carolina's play-action (true PA plus RPO) offense extremely well.

Howell has been good all season, but he wasn't as sharp early in the season as you'd expect for a player that received as much hype as he did during the offseason. He averaged 287.8 pass yards per game in the first four contests and threw nine touchdowns against four interceptions.

In the last four games, however, Howell has averaged 370.0 passing yards per game while throwing 14 touchdowns against just two picks. 

During that stretch the Tar Heel ground game has averaged 237.3 rushing yards per game.

The last time Notre Dame faced an offense that averaged over 280 passing yards and 230 rushing yards per game was Clemson back in 2018. Like that day, the Irish defense will need to be on its game, and the Notre Dame offense will need to give a lot of help.

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