University of North Carolina Athletics
Countdown to Kickoff: Humbled and Hungry
August 12, 2005 | Football
Aug. 12, 2005
By Adam Lucas
Barrington Edwards spent his first year in Chapel Hill watching from the sidelines for the first time in his life.
And there were times he couldn't even get to the sidelines.
When Carolina hosted Louisville last season, Edwards followed his normal gameday routine--since NCAA rules required him to sit out the season, he walked through the gates like a normal fan and proceeded to walk toward the Carolina sideline. But a well-meaning security guard stopped him, explaining the sidelines were for players only.
"But I am a player," Edwards argued. He was eventually able to watch the game from field level, but experiences like that one did something unexpected: they humbled the former SuperPrep All-American.
"It was rough," Edwards says. "The worst part was on Friday when the team would go to the hotel. It was weird to not go with them, to have to go through the gates like a fan on game day. But it ended up being good because it humbled me and it gave me an opportunity to look at the game from a different perspective than the one I see when I'm playing in a game."
It might surprise some of Carolina's first-team defenders to hear Edwards talk about being humble. As the Tar Heel scout team tailback last season, the LSU transfer spent much of his practice time slicing through tackles and then moving his mouth almost as much as his feet.
"He came in very cocky," says Jarwarski Pollock, Edwards's closest friend on the team. "Or maybe not cocky, but confident. Sitting out helped him realize you have to stay humble and you can't let your mouth do your talking. You have to let your actions speak louder than words."
That fine line between cocky and confident is one Edwards has spent significant time considering. He's always been a standout on the football field, from the time he began playing at nine years old and was immediately moved up to compete against older players. He was highly recruited out of high school, receiving calls from some of the biggest schools in the nation.
There was a time, he admits, those calls from powerful coaches inflated his ego. That's when he decided to pay more careful attention to the distinction between cocky and confident.
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"Being cocky is believing that you're the man and there's nothing anyone can tell you," Edwards says. "A cocky guy won't listen to constructive criticism. A confident guy believes in himself, knows what he wants to accomplish, and listens."
He'll have to do plenty of listening between now and September 10. Gary Tranquill's offense is complex, and Tranquill-trained quarterbacks often say it takes at least two years of immersion to become fully comfortable. Edwards, who spent most of last year running opposing plays rather than Carolina plays, doesn't have two years.
To speed his transition, he's become close with projected starting fullback Rikki Cook, wisely assuming that a solid tailback is only as good as his lead blocker.
He also became a regular in Tranquill's offense this summer. He expected to knock on the door and find a vacant office, especially during the quiet periods when coaches usually steal the opportunity for a respite from football. But throughout the summer, he found Carolina's veteran offensive coordinator sitting in his familiar blue high-backed chair, breaking down a tape or diagramming a play.
"It was crazy," Edwards says. "He's done this for so long that I would think any time he got a break he would get away. But he was always around and his door was never closed. Whenever I wanted help he was always there, and we built a great relationship."
It's that kind of relationship that drew Edwards to Chapel Hill in the first place. When he decided to leave LSU, calls came from numerous football factories. He ultimately seriously considered NC State and Pittsburgh, among others, but a visit to Carolina--and encouragement from his high school coaches, Scott Chadwick and Doug Rogers--showed him a glimpse of his new home.
"When I came on my visit, I knew I didn't need to see anything else," he says. "It felt like a second home."
And it didn't hurt that his new second home had a shallow depth chart at tailback. Edwards looked at the two-deep and realized Chad Scott and Jacque Lewis would graduate after 2004, leaving Ronnie McGill as the only experience in the backfield. Edwards, a native of Bowie, Md., thought he and McGill would make a capable tandem.
That changed over the summer when he was working out one bench away from McGill and saw the incumbent starter suffer a serious chest injury that will keep him out of the lineup until October.
"It scared me because I look up to Ronnie as a running back," Edwards says. "When I saw him get hurt, I knew right away what I would have to do. He's going to come back strong and I'm going to hold it down until he comes back."
Adam Lucas is the publisher of Tar Heel Monthly and can be reached at alucas@tarheelmonthly.com. He is the coauthor of the official book of the 2005 championship season, Led By Their Dreams, and his book on Roy Williams's first season at Carolina, Going Home Again, is now available in bookstores. To subscribe to Tar Heel Monthly or learn more about Going Home Again, click here.
