With each passing Saturday, the architectural mistake in the end zone, the Butch Mahal, looks more and more ridiculous. Carolina’s failed effort to be like the SEC has wrought all this. But that’s an old excuse. What’s happening now is different.

This is a bad football team not because it has no talent but because it has no direction and no cohesion. The offense, a manic fast-break scheme designed to pile up plays, is the reason the defense is so bad. Any program built around a strategy of running 90 plays a game is a program that doesn’t care about defense.

The defense understands its role all too well.

Let’s be honest, this might be the worst defense in the country. Its odd alignment of two down linemen and a slew of linebackers and bandits and safeties is flawed. That might work in CUSA, but not against ECU or Clemson.

Or a very average Virginia Tech.

Koenning isn’t this bad of a coordinator. His units at Clemson were menacing pass-rushing defenses that were among the best in the country, sent players to the NFL and made him one of the most coveted coordinators around.