University of North Carolina Athletics
Extra Points: Willpower
November 15, 2004 | Football
Nov. 15, 2004
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By Lee Pace
WINSTON-SALEM - There cannot exist a more perfect metaphor for this Carolina football team, for its heart and mindset and perseverance, than three yards of soggy turf and the Herculean effort two elder statesmen of the Tar Heels put toward traversing them Saturday afternoon. John Bunting said early in the week this encounter with old rival Wake Forest would be "a battle of wills." He was dead on correct, and I will take the grit and resolve of Darian Durant and Jason Brown in my corner any day.
The situation was this:
Carolina and Wake Forest were locked in a 10-10 struggle on a chilly, windy afternoon in front of a record crowd at Groves Stadium. Bowl implications hung in the balance. The Deacons were juiced after just scoring a 21-yard touchdown on a freak interception of a deflected pass, but the Tar Heel offense had responded and efficiently driven from its 27 to the Deacon three. The key play was a 34-yard reception by Derrele Mitchell after faking his defender with a perfectly executed stutter route.
All day Carolina had used play-action to the left side and come back with a bootleg to the right and a pass to the tight end with outstanding efficiency. Jon Hamlett, Scott Brumett and Justin Phillips would combine for five catches, 63 yards and one TD, with four of the catches from this "Hoax" family of plays in the playbook of coordinator Gary Tranquill. On second down, Durant faked a handoff to Ronnie McGill, who feigned a run to the left behind the blocking of a pulling guard and fullback. Durant wheeled and rolled out to the right, looking for tight end Jocques Dumas in the end zone. When Dumas was covered, Durant tucked the ball at the 10 and headed toward the goal.
He was met at the three by a trio of Deacons -- Bryan Andrews was first, followed an instant later by Goryal Scales and then Eric King. Durant appeared stopped. It would be third-and-goal from the three.
"It was going to take more than one guy to get me down," Durant said. "I just kept fighting. I wasn't going to go down without a fight."
Durant braced his sturdy frame and girded his legs for the scrum. A fifth-year senior, Durant had endured a record-setting career but too often had thrown for a zillion yards in a losing cause. Now he was enjoying a taste of team success as a senior -- including league wins over Georgia Tech, N.C. State and Miami. He liked it. He wanted more. There was too much history here to fold like a matchstick.
Meanwhile, fellow senior Jason Brown, Carolina's outstanding center, was trailing the play after pulling and rolling to the right to protect Durant while the quarterback looked for a receiver. Seeing his teammate piled up at the three, Brown launched an assault from the rear. Whether he was attempting to dislodge one particular Deacon from his grasp of Durant or was in fact pushing Durant toward the goal line is debatable, but we'll assume (wink, wink) the former since the latter would be against the rules.
"Guys started clinging to Darian like a magnet, and I just kept pushing," Brown said. "At first, I was like, `Is this going to work?' But once I saw us gaining yard by yard, I just kept pushing as long as I could.
"I was like the little engine that could. I just kept driving my feet."
Durant and Brown were cloaked by six Deacons when they finally spilled over the goal line, giving Carolina a 17-10 lead following the point-after. Bunting said after the game that he didn't get a very good look at the play, but that he "was surprised when the referee put his hands up."
The next day, Bunting saw the play on tape and said: "It was great team play. Darian is a strong guy. Then you get Jason involved. It was an amazing play. He was stopped on the three and pushed his way into the end zone. Certainly they are two of our best leaders, two of our most experienced players. And those are two guys who are dying to win."
That represents this Tar Heel team in a nutshell. With its 31-24 victory over the Deacons, Carolina is 5-5 and fighting for a potential bowl bid against the most vicious schedule in school history.
"Critical condition" signs were posted after a lopsided loss at Virginia.
"On life-support" was added after the home defeat to Louisville.
"Funeral services set" was the headline after the long, lonely trip to Utah.
Durant addressed the naysayers in the glow of victory Saturday: "I just want to say to those guys: `I know who you are, and take that.'"
The plot Saturday took turns down avenues and through boroughs that left Tar Heel fans winded and spent after nearly three hours and 30 minutes of competition.
There were two faked kicks by the Tar Heels -- one bogus field goal to set up a second-quarter touchdown and a counterfeit punt with the scored tied at 24-all late in the game. There were eight dropped balls by the Tar Heels that put pressure on the offense. There was some outstanding defensive effort on Carolina's part as it snuffed most of Wake Forest's vaunted misdirection package, limiting the Deacons to 335 yards offense and 4.3 yards a snap; most notable was a Deacon first down at the Carolina three in the second quarter that was snuffed into a field goal three snaps later. There was a scary injury to receiver Jarwarski Pollock, who was knocked cold for 30 seconds after catching and then dropping a pass. And there was a first-half field-position advantage for Wake Forest, facilitated in part by Carolina's plan to squib its kickoffs under the wind, only to have kicker Connor Barth nearly whiff two attempts and hand the ball to Wake Forest near midfield.
Through it all, the Tar Heels maintained their composure and stuck with their game plan -- just as they've done throughout the season. When they could not hold a 24-10 lead early in the fourth quarter, no one panicked. One Carolina player after another stepped up with crucial plays. The Tar Heel offense was thwarted on its next-to-last possession of the game when linemen Brown and Willie McNeill were flagged for holding penalties. The look on their faces as the offense repaired to the bench was one of sheer anger. I told listeners on the Tar Heel Sports Network at the time that it didn't look as if Brown and McNeill wanted the twilight of their collegiate careers to include a loss at Wake Forest.
"We told Darian when we got the ball back, `You will not be touched,'" Brown said.
Brown was right as it took only four plays after a crucial three-and-out defensive stand for Carolina to score, Jesse Holley notching the winning touchdown on a 45-yard throw from Durant with a minute to play.
Carolina began its crucial possession at its 44 thanks to a poor Wake Forest punt and had 1:53 on the clock and two timeouts. Tranquill's first priority was to get into field-goal position, so a strike to the end zone wasn't part of the plan. But on first down at the Deacons' 45, he called a play-action pass that included four layers of receivers on the right side after faking a run to the left. Rolling to the right, Durant could throw to Brumett five yards deep; to Mitchell about 15 yards deep at the hashmark; to Wright about 18 yards deep on the sideline, or to Holley, deep downfield at the goal line. Deacon safety Josh Gattis thought Wright was going to be the target, so he bit on Wright's out-cut. Durant saw Holley was alone at the goal line and threw it. Gattis tried but couldn't make up the lost ground.
"It seemed like the ball would never fall," Holley said. "I was hoping the wind would push it down or a bird would push it down. I just was just thinking, `When is this football going to fall?'"
It finally did. Holley wrapped it up and the game was essentially over.
"There was no other choice but to catch it," Holley said. "There was too much riding on it."
The defense and special teams did their parts as well. Week by week, the Carolina defense gets a little better. From being hapless at Virginia on Sept. 11 and allowing 549 yards, the defense has settled in the last month and played well at times against Miami, Virginia Tech and Wake Forest.
"It's unbelievable the job this coaching staff has done with this defense," linebacker Jeff Longhany said. "They've taken a bunch players with attitudes in the dumps, picked us up, made us believe we are good players. Today we read our keys, trusted the game plan and played a good game."
"We still have kinks, for sure," added linebacker Doug Justice. "But we're so much better than we were two months ago. Some of those mistakes never happen any more. Playing Florida State and Miami and Utah and all these teams put us in a position to be ready for anything."
Carolina's linebackers and secondary never once swallowed on Wake's arsenal of reverses and misdirection plays. Four handoffs on reverses netted nary a yard of production. Justice thwarted one reverse pass with a 10-yard sack. The Deacons' offense is too good to be shut down totally. They made good yards when their gifted young quarterback, Ben Mauk, got loose on the corners and when their equally talented tailback, Chris Barclay, does what he does best -- run hard and break tackles.
"I am really pleased with the way our kids played with discipline for the most part, with the exception of a couple of offside penalities," Bunting said. "They stayed at home, honored the reverse. We made good fits. We played the deep ball pretty well again. I think Ced Holt and Jacoby Watkins as a twosome had their best games at cornerback."
The defense allowed Wake two consecutive scoring drives in the fourth quarter but stiffened at the end to allow the Heels to get the ball back for the winning score.
"We made a stand for ourselves," Justice said. "We said, `We need to do this as a defense,' and we made plays. That was the incentive. We had to made things happen."
Watkins certainly made something happen on that series, stopping Barclay on a third-down screen pass well short of a first down. "Jacoby tackled the best running back in the ACC in the open field," Bunting said. "That was huge."
Huge is a nice word for this team that so little was expected of back in August.
Beating Georgia Tech after six years of losing? Huge.
Beating N.C. State after two straight losses and after enduring such negative face-to-face comparisons among fans and media for so long? Huge.
Beating No. 3 Miami at home? Huge.
Beating Wake Forest, the darling also of fans and media under the Jim Grobe-led resurgence of late, after squandering a 14-point lead in the fourth quarter? Huge as well.
We're not talking ACC championship or BSC huge, of course. But in relative terms, this Carolina team with Darian Durant and Jason Brown in charge has loomed very large indeed.
SQUIB KICKS - Senior tailback Jacque Lewis broke a bone in his right foot and will miss the Duke game. His 48-yard run in the second quarter set up Carolina's first score, a Connor Barth field goal.
Send your questions about Tar Heel football to Lee Pace at lpace@nc.rr.com . Please include your first and last names and hometown. . Individual replies are not possible because of volume of mail received. His Q&A column will appear each Friday during the season.
