CHARLOTTE, N.C. — Gio Lopez moved around freely while stretching in North Carolina’s rain-delayed warmups on Saturday in Jerry Richardson Stadium, looking healthy and ready to go vs. Charlotte — a stark difference from how he looked just five days ago. A crushing hit took Lopez out of UNC’s season opener against TCU in the third quarter, with Horned Frog defenders knocking him to the ground. After hobbling off the field Monday night, the process of getting back on the field was an arduous one. Lopez said he spent five to six hours with the trainers each day in the lead up to Saturday’s game against Charlotte. Through that preparation, he gradually started feeling healthy enough to play.
Lopez completed 17 of his 25 passes, threw for 155 yards and a touchdown and added 44 rushing yards on nine attempts in a turnaround performance, guiding UNC to a 20-3 win on the road against Charlotte. “For me, I don’t feel like it was maybe a comfort standpoint,” Lopez said after the game. “I feel like it was more just getting out there and playing. I think we all played way better today than we did on Monday. But overall, just think it was good for us to get a win.”
Lopez connected with more players through the air on Saturday than he did on Monday vs. TCU. On Monday, five of Lopez’s first six pass attempts were to Jordan Shipp, and he completed just four passes to three receivers. Against the 49ers, nine different players caught a pass from Lopez.
Lopez set the tone with a 51-yard touchdown strike to Chris Culliver in UNC’s first drive of the game, in which it took just three plays for the Tar Heels to get down the field. All three of those plays were Lopez completions of 10 yards or more. Lopez completed his first eight passes on Saturday.
Bill Belichick attributed the decline in negative plays to the team’s ability to spread the football around better on Saturday, and the lack of turnovers gave the team a chance to sustain a rhythm offensively. “Positive plays and staying out of long yardage makes everything easier for everybody,” Belichick said. “It allows you to be balanced where you can run or throw. You don’t get into the second and twelves and third and thirteens. They’re just hard to convert. It’s hard to make 10 yards on three downs, let alone make it on one. Just having positive plays gave everybody more of an opportunity to balance the offense out. More running, more passes, quick passes. We took some shots down the field. He had a big one to Chris there on that first drive. It was a great throw. And a great job by Chris of running through the ball. But just having more plays and have more balance and staying out of long yardage, that was a big key for us.”
North Carolina got Lopez on the move more often as well, taking advantage of his mobility. The lefty came into UNC after running for 465 yards and seven touchdowns on 5.7 yards per carry at South Alabama last season. He rarely ever had running opportunities against the Horned Frogs in the season opener, even to move the pocket for himself and extend plays. Saturday, though, was a different story. UNC moved the pocket for Lopez to buy him some time to throw, and he even took off with the football himself on plays that broke down. Designed runs with Lopez helped UNC move down the field as well. The 49ers never sacked Lopez, as he used his speed to his benefit. “Gio, I thought, did a really good job of improvising and extending some plays where there wasn’t much there,” Belichick said. “He was able to extend the play one way or another, either (to) throw it or to pull the ball down and run to pick up positive yardage. I think that’s one of his real strengths as a quarterback, is his gamesmanship and making plays in those situations. He really helped us out here a couple of times, where he either got the first down or got us pretty close to the first down on second down on plays that he extended. And the offensive line did a good job, too, of moving the pocket out so there was some space for him to move.”
Some of it was designed. A lot of it was just Gio being Gio, which is good.
North Carolina used Lopez to his strengths in Saturday’s win, as the 6-foot quarterback resembled the player he was billed to be coming out of Mobile. Along with the rest of his team, Lopez became the subject of public scrutiny for his opening performance against TCU. Some in the television media questioned how he got the starting nod to begin the season. Many on social media ridiculed his play. Despite all of the criticism and doubt around himself and the team this week, Lopez managed to deliver a redemptive performance and offer a strong outing as UNC’s starter. “This week, it was good to have a short week, almost,” Lopez said. “Usually, you want to have a full week of recovery, but I think for us, it was a positive to have a short week and get that taste out of our mouth. We still didn’t play our best ball at all. We can play a lot better, but just overall, to get a win, it felt good.”
