UNC Football: Sticking With Billy Edwards
For a few hours Saturday, UNC fans thought they had it figured out. The Tar Heels jumped out to a 17-3 lead over Clemson, and social media was already penciling in the win. Then Dabo Swinney pulled a page from Lee Corso’s playbook: “Not so fast, my friend.” Clemson scored 22 points in the second half while UNC managed just three, turning a 14-point deficit into a 28-20 comeback victory. Almost immediately, the conversation shifted to the quarterback.
Billy Edwards did not play well. There is no reason to sugarcoat it. He missed throws, struggled when Clemson changed the defensive picture after the snap, and could not consistently generate enough offense when the game tightened up. For a quarterback playing at North Carolina, that is going to bring criticism. But one bad game does not erase everything that came before it, and it certainly does not automatically mean the answer is sitting on the bench.
This is the same Billy Edwards who led UNC to a win over TCU in Ireland. He is the quarterback who won the job in the spring and summer, learned the offense, and has been operating the system Bobby Petrino and Bill Belichick want to run. If the question is whether Edwards needs to play better, the answer is obvious. Of course he does. If the question is whether one difficult game against Clemson means UNC should immediately turn the offense over to a quarterback who did not win the job in practice, that is a much different conversation.
There is another part of Saturday that deserves more attention, and that is the running game. Clemson stuffed a couple of inside runs, but that does not mean UNC needed to abandon the run as quickly as it did. The Tar Heels were having success on the ground, and continuing to run the football could have helped settle the offense, slow down Clemson’s pass rush and take some pressure off Edwards. When your quarterback is struggling, you do not necessarily need to ask him to throw his way out of the problem.
UNC also had opportunities to make Clemson defend more of the field horizontally. Jet sweeps, quarterback-designed runs and other wrinkles could have forced the Tigers to account for something different and potentially slowed down a defense that was constantly changing the picture Edwards saw after the snap. Once Clemson started creating confusion for Edwards, UNC needed to find ways to make his job easier. Instead, the offense increasingly put the game on his arm.
That is where Petrino has to own part of this one, too. Petrino is a great offense play caller yet I think when watching the tape there will be a few calls he would like to change..When your quarterback is struggling and your running game is giving you something, you keep feeding it. You do not have to become predictable, but you can use the run game to create easier throws, slow down the pass rush and make the defense respect more than one thing.
That is why the answer after Saturday probably is not to panic. It is to adjust. Edwards needs to be better, Petrino needs to put him in better situations, the offensive line needs to give him time, and the entire offense needs to find ways to create easier opportunities when a defense begins taking away what it wants to do. There is plenty to fix without immediately deciding the quarterback is the problem that has to be replaced.
Of course, that will not stop the calls for Miles O’Neill or Travis Burgess. That is what fan bases do after a loss like this. The backup quarterback becomes the most popular player on the roster because nobody has seen him fail yet. It is easy to imagine that the guy on the sideline would have made the throw, escaped the pressure or found the open receiver. What we do not know is whether he would have actually done it.
Neither O’Neill nor Burgess won the job in practice. That does not mean either one cannot eventually become the answer. It means there was a reason Edwards entered the season as the starter. If the coaching staff eventually decides that Edwards is not giving them what they need, then make the change based on what they see in practice and what happens on the field. But changing quarterbacks simply because the fan base is frustrated after one ugly loss is not a plan.
And with Notre Dame and Pitt coming up, this is where the decision becomes even more important. Those games will tell us much more about Edwards than one afternoon against Clemson. Can he recognize what went wrong? Can he handle a defense that changes its looks? Can he make the throws that were there? Can Petrino design an offense that helps him settle into the game instead of asking him to carry it?
Those are the questions that matter now.
Billy Edwards has to respond because that is the reality of being the starting quarterback at North Carolina. The coaching staff has to respond, too, because it is their job to put him in the best position to succeed. If Edwards struggles again, the conversation about changing quarterbacks becomes much more legitimate. But if he responds with better decisions, better throws and better command of the offense, then Clemson becomes what it should be: one bad afternoon in a long season.
The easiest thing to do after a loss is to find someone to replace. The harder thing is to figure out why the plan stopped working, fix the problems and see if the player who earned the job can respond.
For now, UNC should stick with Billy Edwards.
Not because he was good enough against Clemson.
He wasn't.
Stick with him because the season is bigger than one game, the alternatives have not proven they are better, and the next step should be finding out whether Edwards can learn from his worst performance rather than assuming it defines him.
