University of North Carolina Athletics
Lucas: Picture of a Quarterback
September 18, 2005 | Football
Sept. 18, 2005
By Adam Lucas
Quarterbacks are supposed to be the pretty boys.
They're supposed to have the perfect hair, the constant smile, and walk out of the locker room to meet the prettiest girl in the stadium.
This, then, could not be a quarterback. Not this man with the blades of grass in his hair, the weary expression, the tender ribs and ankle. This is Matt Baker 20 minutes after Carolina's 14-5 loss to Wisconsin, and he looks headed for a date with an ice pack, not a coed.
The Tar Heel senior took his last snap of the game, which ended in an incompletion, while hobbling noticeably on a wounded right ankle. Officially, he'd been sacked four times. But it wasn't the sacks that had done the most damage--it was the blastings he took after getting rid of the ball, one of which knocked the breath out of him and forced him to leave the game for one play.
Baker ended with perhaps the most inartistic 281-yard passing performance in Carolina history, as the offense continually sputtered to a halt because of an ugly combination of dropped passes, bad throws, porous offensive line play, an ineffective running game, and penalties.
The Tar Heels were very effective last year in limiting key penalties, compromising for sometimes being less talented than their opponent by being more disciplined. And while the 12 flags for 115 yards Saturday night were bad, the timing of the penalties--all of which seemed to negate big plays or give the Badgers another breath--was even worse.
"We could never get in a rhythm," Baker said. "I didn't do a very good job of running the game today. There's no one place to point the finger (for the penalties) so I'll take it."
That acceptance of responsibility is a theme he echoed no less than five times in a four-minute postgame interview. But it's hard to pin all the blame on him when he's essentially a sitting duck behind an offense that has now run for 118 yards in two games, an average of 2.3 yards per rushing play.
"I felt like we ran the ball well at the beginning of the game," Barrington Edwards said. "I felt we had a decent game running the ball."
But the stats don't support that conclusion. The Tar Heels never broke a run for more than 13 yards, and the first 10 runs by the Edwards/Cooter Arnold combo went for a total of 26 yards.
Despite the struggles, however, it seemed as though the Tar Heel defense was going to provide enough opportunities for Carolina to win the game. Everything went wrong for the Heels in the first half--penalties, a dropped pass in the end zone, an injury to Doug Justice that may potentially be very serious, no running game--and it was just a 7-3 deficit.
The turning point happened at the end of the third quarter. Behind a stellar Baker-to-Jesse Holley connection, the Heels squeezed out of the shadow of their own goal line and moved into good field position. A punt pinned Wisconsin inside their own 20-yard-line, and a grounding penalty left the Badgers punting from their own 2.
Now Carolina had the short field. Now they had room to bust a big play. But with no running game, the Heels had to throw on first down, and the ball fell incomplete. Two more incompletions later the series concluded with a three-and-out. Field position could still be salvaged, but then Brooks Foster picked up a personal foul penalty for kick catching interference, moving the Badgers out to their own 35.
The field tilted dramatically with that series, and suddenly Wisconsin had the short field. Carolina's next three drives started from their own 10, their own 20, and their own 10--hardly the kind of field position that lends itself to big comebacks.
"I don't think we've ever had this many penalties in my four years here and I'm disappointed in that," John Bunting said. "It's horrendous and I was one of the guilty people. So I'll start with me. We've got to clean that up."
It must be cleaned up quickly. Bunting had talked to his team about a two-game season, but the Tar Heels are now 0-2 in that stretch with a trip to bloodthirsty Raleigh next weekend. It appears Bunting and defensive coordinator Marvin Sanders have patched the leaky defense. But now Bunting faces an offensive crisis, and his team will face opponents in the next few weeks that will make Carolina prove they can run the ball, committing even more players to defending the pass.
That means better protection of Baker is an absolute necessity. He needs to end games looking less like he's just spent 3 hours trying to ride a bull with no rodeo clowns and more like the person one local newspaper photographer said was one of the most photogenic people she'd ever shot.
More, in other words, like a quarterback.
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.
