UNC need to get pressure on the quarterback against Stanford
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North Carolina’s offense has not been their strong suit in 2025. They’re averaging under 20 points per game, and last week’s win over Syracuse was the first time this year they’ve put up over 25 against an FBS team.
One power conference team that has a very coherent argument for having an even worse offense is this week’s opponent: Stanford. The Cardinal are even lower than the Tar Heels on the points per game leaderboard, going for 17.8 per game. Stanford do have a slight edge in yards per game — 307 to 298 — but there are two big areas that have ended up costing them in several games this season.
One is turnovers. Quarterback Ben Gulbranson has thrown 10 interceptions — to just nine touchdowns — on the season, and once you add in their four fumbles the Cardinal are well over a turnover per game so far. Just last week against Pitt, the Cardinal actually moved the ball down the field somewhat decently, going for 326 yards at 4.6 per play. However, their three turnovers burned them and ensured that they still ended up losing by multiple touchdowns.
The other facet that’s been a struggle for them is keeping Gulbranson and whoever else has been in the game upright. If UNC can continue that trend this weekend, they stand a chance at coming away with a second-straight win.
In nine games on the season, Stanford has allowed 29 sacks. There are only five teams in all of FBS that have given up more. Even more damning is that on those sacks, the Cardinal have lost a total of 257 yards. Only South Carolina has gone backwards more thanks to sacks.
With numbers like that, you can probably guess that Gulbranson’s numbers on the season have been affected, but you may not guess the extent of th eimpact. For the year, on 33 rushing attempts — which counts sacks in the college game — he has -201 yards. As someone who believes that sacks can also be pinned on the quarterback in addition to an offensive line, it’s hard for me to believe that he’s not to blame for a decent chunk of those struggles.
On UNC’s end of this possible scenario, for all their struggles this season, the defensive line that Bill Belichick and company have built is pretty far down the list. They’re far from the best team in the country at getting pressure on the quarterback, but they have a perfectly respectable 18 sacks in eight games. We also just saw them put up six sacks against Virginia a couple weeks back, and by almost every measure, UVA has been far better in that aspect than Stanford.
Even if everything points to UNC being able to go out and have a good day against the Cardinal, they still actually have to go do it. We’ve seen plenty of instances this season of them having the potential to do something, only to then not pull it off. However, we did just watch the Tar Heels take advantage of an iffy quarterback spot and come away with a win. They are capable of doing so again this weekend — they just have to follow through.
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