Thirteen football players suspended for selling school-issued Air Jordans.

Coming off a 3-9 season and needing a bounceback 2018 to keep his longterm future in Chapel Hill secure, that's a tough headline for Larry Fedora. But will the suspensions be as detrimental to UNC's season as they seem at first blush? Inside Carolina football reporter Ross Martin doesn't think so.

"Thirteen sounds like a crazy number," said Martin on Tuesday's episode of the 247Sports Morning Blitz. "But it was only two starters and a lot of reserves and backups, so the hit is not really as bad as it sounds."

Without question, Martin says, the absences that will be most heavily felt will be those of Tomon Fox and Malik Carney, both projected starters on the defensive line; Carney was UNC's best defensive lineman a year ago — if not its best overall defensive player — and Fox showed promise as a freshman. But a critical point in North Carolina's favor is that, citing the safety concern of overtaxing a thin defensive line group, the Tar Heels successfully petitioned the NCAA to stagger Carney and Fox's four-game suspensions. And neither suspension will start until after UNC's season opener at Cal.

If you're going to have two of your most important players suspended for eight combined games, being able to handpick which games they're suspended for is a pretty good deal.

The other big name on the list of suspensions is quarterback Chazz Surratt, who started seven games at quarterback in 2017. But Nathan Elliott took over for Surratt late in the year and was neck-and-neck with Surratt in spring practice. An injury to Elliott could be a problem, but there's little difference, if any, in what he and Surratt bring to the table. So as long as Elliott stays healthy, all this does is help Fedora decide the winner of a close quarterback battle.

Despite the mitigating factors, there's no question that Monday's news narrows UNC's margin for error. And with a schedule that features plenty of games that should be toss-ups — including games against Cal, UCF, and Pitt in the first quarter of the season — that can be a formula for close wins turning into close losses. If the Tar Heels catch some more bad breaks, as they did in 2017, could this be the end of the line for Fedora?

"He's not going to get fired after this year unless they win only one, two, or maybe three games — and then you start talking about that," said Martin. "Four, five, six, wins — I think he keeps his job building to next year. 2019 will kind of be the year to determine which direction the team is going. If they win five, six games [in 2018], that's trending up. Coming back the next year, they'll have a lot of upperclassmen."

Fedora's year-over-year record at North Carolina is a bit of a Rorschach test for UNC fans. Optimists will see consistently above-average performance over six seasons with one great year and one terrible year mixed in as outliers. Pessimists will see a three-year downward trend after reaching the ACC title game in 2015.

"I think a lot of fans don't want him to be there," Martin said. "The 3-9 season was so bad. They think the offense is kind of fluky and you never have a really good defense. I think a lot of fans want him on the hot seat. But I think if you know what you're talking about and you've talked with the AD and realize kind of what he's gone through here, having to recruit underneath that NCAA cloud. And the fact that he is two seasons removed from 11-3, producing a lot of NFL Draft picks, and winning eight games with Mitch Trubisky. I think he's shown he knows how to coach and recruit and that the 3-9 season is more of a fluke."

For more discussion of the impact of UNC's suspensions, listen to Tuesday's episode of The Morning Blitz, a new daily podcast from 247Sports that concisely explains and analyzes the biggest stories of the day in college football and college football recruiting. You can listen to today's episode The Morning Blitz using the media player embedded above. You can subscribe to The Morning Blitz on Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, Google Play, Spotify, or by plugging the show's RSS feed into your podcast player of choice.