University of North Carolina Athletics
Lucas: The Wrong Kind Of Roll
October 14, 2006 | Football
Oct. 14, 2006
By Adam Lucas
Sometimes it takes a full-length video to summarize a team's season. Sometimes it takes weepy music and fancy camerawork and slick production.
And sometimes it just takes one play.
If you need the capsule version of Carolina's 2006 football season so far, you only have to watch one play. Cue the film:
The Tar Heels like to roll one coverage man from one side of the formation to the other seconds before the kickoff. South Florida decided to compensate for that by sending one of their front line return men to shadow the man in motion. That created an opening that the Carolina coaches spotted during the game.
It presented the perfect opportunity for an onside kick. After cutting the deficit to 27-13 with 8 minutes left in the third quarter, it was time to seize some momentum.
The Carolina special teams pulled the play perfectly. The call was perfectly timed. A recovery could have turned the momentum of the game. No one gave away the play by looking overeager. No one jumped offside. Meanwhile, everyone at the front of the South Florida return team immediately retreated to set up their return, creating a gaping hole for the onside kick.
Connor Barth tapped the ball. It popped, bounced, and rolled.
And stopped.
The Tar Heel coverage team cleared out every front-line South Florida player. That left only Barth standing over the ball, hoping it would keep rolling. Wishing it would keep rolling.
And it wouldn't. It just sat there, nine and three-quarters yards from the line of scrimmage. When have you ever seen that? When have you seen two players from the kicking team standing over a football waiting for it to go the designated ten yards?
Eventually, the Tar Heels touched it. There wasn't much else they could do. It was either touch the ball or wait a few more seconds for the South Florida cavalry to arrive.
"It was the perfect setup," Barth said.
It really was. It was perfect. A perfect microcosm of the season.
"If I would've known I had so much room, I could've put it a few more yards," Barth said. "I probably could've put it 13 yards."
Could have, but didn't. And it's not really Barth's fault. A football isn't round. It takes crazy bounces.
Don't misunderstand: South Florida's 37-20 victory wasn't the product of fluky bounces. The better team won. The Bulls were 5-of-5 inside the red zone (Carolina opponents are scoring a touchdown 85 percent of the time inside the 20s), they allowed just 285 yards (21 on a fake field goal), and as soon as Carolina failed to capitalize on the onside kick, they immediately took the ball down the field and punched it into the end zone, essentially putting the game out of reach.
Good teams make those kinds of plays.
For weeks, offensive players have been saying they need to find "it" on offense. They don't know what "it" is, but they need to find that one spark that suddenly clicks the offense into gear.
Halfway through the season, though, it's starting to appear that it's not something that's missing that's the problem. It's something that is already present far too often: mistakes. Physical, mental, and egregious mistakes.
The Tar Heels committed two turnovers (it could have been more) and ten penalties. By the time the season is over, they will have more or less toured the rule book on penalties--Saturday's infractions included an illegal substitution and a pair of personal fouls.
One of those roughness penalties negated perhaps the biggest momentum-booster of the day, a 21-yard Connor Barth run on a fake field goal that would have given the Tar Heels a first down in the red zone. Instead, the penalty moved the ball back to the 30, and Carolina mustered only a field goal.
The real damage, though, came on the deflated Tar Heel sideline.
"It just sucks all the air out of you," Ronnie McGill said. "You keep doing it over and over and it gets more and more frustrating as it goes on. For the people who are not committing those penalties, it hurts us because we're fighting and some people keep doing the same thing."
Right now, doing the same thing is leading to the same results: losses. Carolina travels to Charlottesville on Thursday, where their last victory came before any player on the roster was born. Oh, and by the way, Larry Edwards, one of the few consistent defensive performers, met the media with his shoulder immobilized because of an injury he suffered in pregame warmups.
"The ball went nine yards," Barth said with a wry smile and a shake of his head, still miffed at the erratic fortunes of a pigskin. "Next time, maybe. What are you going to do?"
Adam Lucas's third book on Carolina basketball, The Best Game Ever, chronicles the 1957 national championship season and is available now. His previous books include Going Home Again, focusing on Roy Williams's return to Carolina, and Led By Their Dreams, a collaboration with Steve Kirschner and Matt Bowers on the 2005 championship team.
