University of North Carolina Athletics
Lee Pace's Extra Points
August 21, 2000 | Football
Aug. 21, 2000
It's the flow and cadence of football that makes a fall Saturday such a treat--four seconds of organized thuggery, followed by a respite of 25 seconds, time to crack a peanut, parse the just-completed down and anticipate the coming one. Breaths are caught, schemes are hatched, batons are twirled. What's next? The deep ball? The tight end on the curl? The toss sweep? Three wides? A safety blitz? LT or Greg Ellis or Julius Peppers coming like a train off the corner? Which varmint gets the call from the defensive coordinator, rummaging around in his zoo of fronts and stunts--wolf, eagle, tiger, bear (no lie -- they're straight from the Tar Heels' defensive playbook)?
These are appeals of football and football alone. There's hardly the time for such diversions in the bustle of basketball, and sharp indeed is the baseball man who knows a slider when he sees one or notes the subtle shadings of the outfield.
This is why football season is so eagerly anticipated each August around Chapel Hill and other college towns. Each and every fan can play along, moving the pieces around the chessboard of his mind, sitting on the 35-yard-line in Kenan Stadium. "I've come to understand that every man can do two things," former Tar Heel coach Dick Crum once said. "Grill a steak and coach a football team." Make that woman, too, Coach, my wife calls for a fake punt six times a game and every eon or so God grants her wish.
What anticipation the 2000 season generates, then, with new colonels for the offense and defense today under the generalship of Carl Torbush.
There's Kenny Browning, only seven years ago the head coach of one of North Carolina's most respected high-school programs. He was elevated to Carolina's defensive coordinator last February when Torbush decided being a boss and bossee wasn't in the best interest of the program. He knows technique, Xs-and-Os and players' insides. "I've seen that look in his eye the last month like he had at Northern Durham, when the whole team was on his shoulders," says his son, Chuck.
And there's Mike O'Cain, late of the head-coaching position at N.C. State. Nice man. Respected quarterbacks coach. Believer in offensive symmetry between power and pass, between standing pat and rolling the dice. Reviled in some NCSU quarters because he never beat the Tar Heels, but now enjoying being a hands-on coach again. "I'm having a ball," O'Cain says. "Not that I didn't enjoy being a head coach. I did. But getting closer to the players again kind of recharges your batteries. I've spent more time on Xs-and-Os in eight months than I did in seven years."
The speculation about O'Cain's chalk doodling has been topped around Tar Heelia this summer only by why Roy Williams said "No."
What will the Heels look like under O'Cain?
Carl Snavely had his single wing and then the new-fangled T-formation that assistant George Barclay installed, Jim Tatum and Jim Hickey their split-T, Bill Dooley his wing-I, Crum his quickly aborted veer and then pro-I, and Mack Brown his multiple attack that over 10 years used power, dropback passing, option and later the West Coast passing game. Torbush hired Steve Marshall when he took over in 1998 and asked Marshall to build an attack that would be well-rounded but, on the eve of Armageddon, could turn to its strength of bulldozing three yards up the innards. No matter your take on the process--lack of material or coaching acumen or healthy players at key positions--the result was a disaster. Marshall is an excellent offensive line recruiter and coach, but in the end the chemistry all around wasn't good.
"I don't know if you can put a tag on what we're going to do," one offensive coach said in 1998 before the new staff took the field with high hopes. He meant it as a compliment to the vision of being unpredictable, but the sentence has come back as an indictment. The Tar Heels couldn't do anything well.
"You have to major in something," as Bill Dooley's said often.
What goes around comes around in the game of football, and there's an old element from the Tar Heel archives that's going to get dusted off in coming years. Close your eyes and think back to the '70s and the Bacchae and K.C. and the Sunshine Band and Don McCauley and Kelvin Bryant running and running and running behind All-Americas like Ken Huff and Dave Drechsler.
How much did you whine about it then? "Throw the dadgum ball, Bill," we all whined.
What would you have paid for it last October against Houston and Furman?
I was perusing one of the Internet message boards one night not long ago and found a long discussion about former offensive coordinator Greg Davis's infamous third-down pass call at Virginia in 1996. It was intercepted and returned 95 yards for a momentum-shifting score, leading to the Heels' heartbreaking 20-17 loss and missed chance at a Bowl Championship Series invitation. The gist was that everyone loathed the call, but then someone calling himself "Kenan Kommado" made the most lucid statement I've seen about Tar Heel football in several years: "If we'd had the kind of running game that can get seven yards in three plays up the middle, it wouldn't have been an issue. And we won't see a BCS game until we have one."
Bingo. Show that gent to the head of the chalk board.
What Mack Brown did for Carolina in developing its speed game, Torbush is hoping to do along the offensive line. Priority No. 1 at Carolina these days is finding, signing and developing the kind of linemen that can restore a proud tradition that produced nine All-Americas in 12 years from 1972-83. They're the most overlooked and undervalued people on a football team. Get good ones, folks, and the play-calling's a moot point. Enough will work well to keep everyone happy.
But for 2000, until O'Cain and new line coach Robbie Caldwell figure out what they truly have to work with along the front line, the Heels' offense will be a work in progress.
There's definitely more talent, maturity, depth and good health at the skill positions. Ronald Curry is back and apparently at full speed after his injury last fall. Willie Parker is a tailback waiting to star, he and the recently dismissed Daniel Davis shared the same outsides, but Parker's still around because of sterling insides. Bosley Allen, Sam Aiken and Jamal Jones are big-play guys ready to step forward at wideout. Alge Crumpler and Daunta? Finger are a formidable tandem at tight end. Provided they're given some time and clear avenues by the line, these athletes can be quite lethal.
O'Cain's offense would love to look something like the Tar Heels' attacks of 1992 through'94, the second-most acclaimed period of offense in Carolina football history. Those units, led by Jason Stanicek and Mike Thomas at quarterback, averaged 4,704 yards of offense a season, just behind the 4,733 yards averaged by the 1981-83 units directed by Rod Elkins and Scott Stankavage. With Darrell Moody coordinating the offense in the staff meeting rooms and on the practice field and Brown calling the plays during games, the Tar Heels of the early '90s had a sound running game interspersed with productive option (particularly with Stanicek) and a prolific downfield passing attack (particularly under Thomas).
Parker brings more speed to the tailback table than anyone since Curtis Johnson.
Curry has the arm, footspeed and brain power to direct the show.
The receiving corps could develop with junior Kory Bailey being the Corey Holliday-type possession receiver and Allen, Jones and Aiken the Octavus Barnes-style, explosive-play men.
Center Adam Metts is a junkyard dog along the front similar to Scott Falise of the early '90s, and a slimmed-down James Wagstaff might be the Tar Heels' first legitimate high-round O-line draft hope since Kevin Donnalley. Waiting in the wings are last year's highly regarded true freshmen (Greg Woofter is challenging for a starting spot at left tackle) and this fall's true freshmen. Justin Barton, Willie McNeill and Skip Seagraves are textbook-style offensive linemen--tall, reasonably lean, mobile.
"If these freshmen are any indication, Coach Caldwell's going to be bringing in some great athletes along the line," says strength and conditioning coach George Smith.
For the present, though, there are some bright spots along the line, including two players with some experience, fifth-year seniors Wagstaff and Cam Holland.
"I used to beat Wags very play," says defensive end Julius Peppers. "Now that he's quicker, he's tough to beat."
"Adam Metts is a little crazy," says fellow Burlington native Brandon Spoon. "He's the only one who can handle Ryan Sims day after day. He's a fighter."
Though the Tar Heels will not be an option-team per se, many coaches believe a viable option component is essential today in college football to help stem the onslaught of press defenses. This is not the same as the 1970s, however. Then many teams ran a true triple-option out of the wishbone or veer formations, with the quarterback making three reads on each down--give the ball to the dive back, pitch it to the halfback or keep it himself. Those option teams threw the ball infrequently. O'Cain was a quarterback at Clemson in the mid-1970s and for almost 20 years held the school's single-game rushing record for a quarterback, 140 yards against N.C. State. All were on the option with only 15 or so passes a game.
The true triple-option is difficult and time-consuming to get right, as the quarterback literally holds the ball in the dive-man's stomach as he's making the decision to leave it there or pull it out. The option the Tar Heels run today and did in the early 1990s is actually a double-option. The dive play is called in the huddle or by audible at the line of scrimmage. The pitch-keep play is a separate play call altogether with a fake to the fullback and a decision by the QB predicated on his read of the DE/OLB --the whole thing looking to the defense like a seamless triple-option.
"The option slows defenses down," says Spoon. "You can't take as many risks because you're afraid you'll get burned."
"It puts stress on the defense," says Antwon Black, a noted option quarterback in high school. "If they're sending everybody, all you have to do is get the quarterback or pitch-man past one player and you've got a big play."
Today the option combined with a good passing game is a lethal combination.
"What we hope to do with the power game and option will be similar to what we did here in the early '90s," says Moody, now the running backs coach. "But now we're much more mobile formation-wise and sophisticated in the drop-back passing game than what we were doing then. Our drop-back passing game now would compare more with what they were doing here (under Davis) in '96 and '97."
Browning believes the Tar Heel defense can continue to build on its late-season improvement in 1999. Carolina set quite a benchmark for outstanding defense in 1996-97, finishing second in the country in total defense each year. This unit isn't there yet, but it should show more fangs than it has the last two seasons. One big hole the Tar Heels had last year was at the cornerback opposite Errol Hood, both Clemson and Georgia Tech picked that soft scab open for key touchdowns in mid-season victories. With the debut of Michael "Rabbit" Waddell at left corner, the Tar Heels have plugged that leak.
"It's going to be like Dr? Bly and Robert Williams," says Hood. "They had that little tandem and we're looking to have that."
Browning is probably pleased that Hood has that much confidence, but he's also a shade more cautious. "We've got to see how good a man team we'll be," he says. "In fairness to Rabbit, he's still not played a down."
As good as Bly and Williams were, those defenses clicked because of the roasting apparatus up front. "Carolina was good in the secondary but better with those four, five or six guys they'd send every play," says O'Cain, who saw the Heels from the Wolfpack sideline those years. Adds Carolina secondary coach Ron Case, surveying the likes of today's lineup of Peppers, Sims and three senior linebackers: "If you're really good up front, you'll be good in the secondary. Those guys bringing the pressure make all the difference. We're starting to get that caliber of player back."
Beyond the major changes in the program have been a host of little things that vouch for the staff's pushing the creative envelope and being open to new ideas. Crowd noise was pumped into the stadium for the Heels' pre-season scrimmages to simulate game day. Torbush yelled "insults" at field-goal kickers to test their concentration. Players did 10 up-downs on the practice field for dropped passes, fumbles and other mental miscues. "It was all for focus," Hood says. "Better to do an up-down now than get a flag in a game." And a few pieces of the game board have been privately realigned--hopefully to the chagrin of Tulsa, Wake Forest and Florida State.
So what does it all mean? Who knows. That's why they play the games. I do know that with various polls and rankings relegating the Tar Heels to middle-of-the-bunch in the ACC and numbers like 44th in the nation of 115 teams by Sports Illustrated, 48th by Lindy's and 73rd by Athlon, the potential is there to sneak up on a lot of teams. Torbush says simply that the Heels must stay healthy and win a close game early in the year. They've not done either one the last two years, losing by field goals to Miami (Ohio), Stanford and Virginia the first two weeks and dealing with all manner of bone breakings, including Oscar Davenport in 1998 and Curry and Spoon in 1999.
Leaning back in his chair with the interlocking "NC" on the headrest and propping his feet on his desk one recent noon time during two-a-days, Torbush doesn't look like a man worried about the state of the program or his job. At the moment he's hand-writing notes to recruits while his assistants are wolfing down lunch before getting back into the war rooms. Many in the media and the stands will invest in over-unders on how many games Torbush has to win this fall to remain employed following the controversy of the 3-8 ledger in 1999. He's giving that no thought.
Instead, he marvels at how well his staff recruited last year. "I can say very honestly that we only lost one player because of all the problems and uncertainty about me. That's amazing," he says. "That shows once again what people think of the University of North Carolina."
He talks about missing the one-on-one relationship with players he had as linebackers coach and defensive coordinator but enjoying seeing how well O'Cain, Caldwell, Browning and new receivers coach Gunter Brewer have fit into their roles. He points to former linebacker Rick Steinbacher's first eight months on staff juggling a hundred nuts-and-bolts tasks at once, from recruiting logistics to players' class attendance. "That might be one of the best hires I've ever made," Torbush says.
It seems like hardly a do-or-die situation.
"We had a bad year," Torbush says. "We've got a great program."
Now if we could just get to Sept. 2 and the business of eating peanuts and calling the plays.
