CHAPEL HILL, NC — The lower the expectations, the easier it is to live up to them.

North Carolina’s Mack Brown knows that all too well.

His 2021 Tar Heels were the consensus pick to win the Coastal Division and were ranked in the top 10 of both preseason national polls. But they never came close to playing like it once the games actually began, losing their opener at Virginia Tech and stumbling to a break-even regular-season record.

This year’s team is on the exact opposite track.

Projected to have a middle-of-the-pack ceiling after the departure of star quarterback Sam Howell to the NFL, UNC is well on its way to exceeding those expectations by getting off to a 4-1 start.

Considering the current state of the always-chaotic Coastal, the Tar Heels have suddenly played themselves right into the thick of division title contention.

That’s not to say they’re a championship-caliber squad. At least not yet. They have plenty of blemishes to hide, not the least of which is a defense that had allowed close to 40 points per game prior to last week’s encouraging performance against Virginia Tech.

It’s just that none of the other Coastal contenders are any better.

Defending champion Pittsburgh is coming off an upset at the hands of lowly Georgia Tech in which its injury issues and difficulty replacing departed stars Kenny Pickett and Jordan Addison were graphically exposed.

Preseason favorite Miami has dropped 2 in a row, including an inexplicable loss to Middle Tennessee State and has sparked talk of benching quarterback Tyler Van Dyke.

Duke is a feel-good story after winning 4 of its first 5 games under new coach Mike Elko, but the Blue Devils still haven’t really been tested. The rest of the division has been nothing short of awful.

The door of opportunity isn’t just ajar. It’s open wide enough to march a brass band through.

Where does that put UNC?

It’s a question that will go a long way toward being answered over the next 2 games, both against Coastal rivals, before its second open date of the season.

“We’ve got really a 2-week season left,” Brown said on Monday. “We’ve got Miami on the road and Duke on the road. Then we’ve got another break and we come back for 5 straight games (to finish the schedule). We’ve just got to continue to play with confidence to get where we want to be.”

The fact that the Tar Heels are in a position to even think about contending for a division title is something that didn’t seem possible as recently as 2 weeks ago.

Their situation seemed so dicey after giving up 576 yards and 45 points in a loss to a pedestrian Notre Dame squad that the Heels held a players-only meeting to hash out its problems.

According to graduate defensive lineman Ray Vohasek, it was “a man-to-man discussion that had nothing to do with the coaches or the scheme or anything like that. It was more of a conversation like, ‘Hey, we need to turn this thing around.’”

Players-only meetings are usually as effective as the floatation jackets worn by those left behind by lifeboats on the Titanic. They can help keep struggling teams afloat for a while. But they rarely prevent the ship from sinking eventually.

In the Tar Heels’ case, the immediate effect of the internal discussion seems to be positive.

UNC put together its most complete effort of the season, including a defensive performance that shut Virginia Tech out over the final 30 minutes, on the way to a 41-10 victory.

“We showed we can be effective for a whole game,” Brown said, adding that the goal now is to start doing it consistently. “We showed that our coaches know what they’re doing. We showed that our players can play with confidence and play hard for 60 minutes.

“I think we grew from the Notre Dame game. I think we did a good job last week of showing how close we were to being good in a lot of areas.”

Close is the operative word here.

Because as bad as the Tar Heels have been defensively, the Hokies are even worse on the other side of the ball. They’re ranked 12th in the ACC in scoring and total offense and 13th in rushing and passing.

UNC still has work to do before proving it’s capable of preventing good teams from putting up big numbers on the scoreboard. At the same time, its defense doesn’t have to become the 1985 Chicago Bears.

As productive as Drake Maye and his explosive offense have been, averaging an ACC-leading 45 points and 507 yards per game, the defense need only be serviceable for the Tar Heels to catapult themselves to the top of the Coastal Division standings.

And far beyond their modest expectations.