University of North Carolina Athletics
Extra Points: Work To Be Done
September 11, 2006 | Football
Sept. 11, 2006
by Lee Pace, Extra Points
CHAPEL HILL --
It is difficult in these times to open the newspaper, to dare to venture onto the World Wide Web on a Sunday morning - not after the Tar Heels have been ripped in Kenan Stadium 35-10 by Virginia Tech, just one week after Rutgers administers a 21-16 stinging.One columnist reflects on the respective tackling abilities of the Tar Heels' two quarterbacks, given their propensity to throw the ball to opposing defenders. Another writer draws a parallel, with Furman on the card for Saturday night, to the 1999 nadir of the Carl Torbush era when the Paladins marched into Kenan Stadium and ran roughshod over the Tar Heels, 28-3. A writer from Norfolk surveys the pre-game atmosphere in Kenan Stadium, with pockets of the ancient venue stuffed with orange-and-purple clad Hokie fans and other sections still glistening in the noontime sun, void of late-arriving Tar Heel fans. "Indifferent," he pegs it.
John Bunting knows how to deal with these situations.
"I told our players, you're going to have to read a lot of crap," Bunting is saying late Sunday afternoon. "You're going to hear a lot. That's part of it. But you tune it out and you rally around your coaches and your teammates.
"And that's exactly what this football team will do. I have no doubt about that."
Bunting has just ushered a visiting recruit and his family off to the airport, a commitment for the 2007 signing class in hand. He has reviewed the offensive tape of Saturday's loss to the Hokies. He has met with his staff to dissect Saturday's game and plan the coming week's practice regimen. He's conducted his Sunday teleconference with area news media. And he has reviewed plans for the coming weekend's reunion of members of the 1971 and '72 Tar Heel football squads, teams that won back-to-back ACC championships under Coach Bill Dooley. Bunting was a senior linebacker on the 1971 team that posted a 9-3 record and played in the Gator Bowl, and you can bet there are lessons he learned as player 35 years ago he'll impart to his current team, one bruised after an 0-2 start.
"Getting guys from those two teams to Chapel Hill this weekend is good timing for our football program," Bunting says. "Those are two championship teams. How were they built? They were built with tough guys, with tough, hard-nosed guys working really hard together. They overcame some adversity to get to where they were.
"That's the way I look at this thing today. I am really disappointed but I am not discouraged. The players aren't either. There's a tremendous amount of hope, a great belief that we will become a good football team."
This time last week, the Tar Heel defense was being pilloried for having allowed Rutgers to average nearly six yards a snap in the season opener, and Bunting and defensive coordinator Marvin Sanders were bivouacked in the defensive meeting room, poring over tape and the depth chart to find a way to shut down the run. They made some personnel moves, putting outside linebacker Durell Mapp in charge of running the defense and moving senior Victor Worsley into the starting lineup. They worked on their players' psyches, preaching "one snap at a time" and tweaking their ability to not get frustrated and let one mistake morph into a second and third. They established practice-week priorities of getting lined up faster, getting your eyes on the offensive target faster and playing the defense that was called.
"Don't play a defense that isn't called," Sanders preached. "Do your job and trust your teammates to do their's."
"There were a lot of demands placed on the defense last week in practice," Bunting says.
All of that helped on the field Saturday against Virginia Tech. Also assisting was the fact that the Hokies' offense, while featuring some outstanding runners, is not nearly as potent as the offense brought to Chapel Hill a week ago by Rutgers. Fans tend to blame their own team too much without recognizing that Team A's problems are caused to some degree by Team B's prowess.
The Tar Heel defense got after Tech with fury and abandon from the opening whistle Saturday, limiting the Hokies to 68 yards of offense and less than three per snap in the first half (and 224 total). Tech made only two of 10 third-down conversions and had five three-and-out possessions. Mapp practiced all week after working through injury issues during August and the week of the Rutgers game, and his experience, speed and leadership made a difference. Worsley played well at middle linebacker.
"Our game today was a reflection of how we practiced," linebacker Larry Edwards said. "We made sure we knew our assignments, we made sure we did the little things well. We went over our assignments and technique over and over and over again all week. We did it so many times, it became second nature.
"The trademark of our defense is to play fast, physical and smart. We did that today."
This week the same attention will go offensive coordinator Frank Cignetti and his staff to figure out how to convert on the opportunities lost amid four interceptions thrown to Virginia Tech, two each by quarterbacks Joe Dailey and Cam Sexton. Some of the offensive contrast from a reasonably productive opener against Rutgers (403 yards, 25 first downs, 62 percent third-down conversion) is a matter of the competition, just as it is with the defense. Virginia Tech's defense will prove to be one of the best in the ACC, particularly with war-daddy linebackers like Vince Hall and Xavier Adibi. Tech Coach Frank Beamer and defensive coordinator Bud Foster knew they had a plan that would give a young Carolina offense a stout challenge.
"You got two quarterbacks [Dailey and Sexton] who are new, and that's hard against our defense," Beamer said. "Our defense plays fast and they're moving different places fast. We do it all the time in practice, and our inexperienced offense has a tough time, so I knew what their two quarterbacks were going to face."
Still, Cignetti counted 17 snaps that could have resulted in big gains for the Tar Heels had proper decisions been made by the quarterbacks, accurate passes been lofted, a key block executed here or there. There were open receivers on three of the four interceptions who should have been the target of the quarterback. Brooks Foster was open deep on a wheel rout early in the game and was overthrown. One play called as a run that would likely have caught Tech off-guard was inexplicably checked into a pass at the line of scrimmage and resulted in a one-yard loss. While the offensive line and running backs did a good job in pass protection, the line could create only enough air for three yards a clip in the running game.
"We left a lot of football on the field," Bunting says. "It's a shame. It's pretty obvious if we put this week's defense with last week's game, we'd be sitting here with at least one win. If we'd made a couple of plays where we had opportunities Saturday, we'd be sitting with another win, this one over a ranked team." All of those issues will be addressed this week, in particular Dailey's decision-making acumen. Bunting said his interception issues have not been problems of physical execution as much as mental sharpness. We're not talking intelligence here; we're talking about savvy and the ability to make split-second decisions with angry and aggressive tackles breathing down your neck. Part of it is experience. Part of it is knack. "We've got to do a better job to get Joe to focus on the decision-making process first," Bunting says. "I think this week we can make some very specific demands on the quarterbacks and the offense to help them get better."
The kicking game will be under the microscope as well, the punt team in particular. The center and the two players on each side of him are drilled repeatedly to take three steps backward upon the snap of the ball along an imaginary "rail" and block whoever comes through their zone. If all five move three steps in tandem, the integrity of the pocket is maintained. Those five players join up with the two wing players, who line up three yards off the line of scrimmage, to form the protective barrier around the punter. The kick is supposed to get off in two seconds or less.
Against Tech and its vaunted punt-block team, the guard on one side and tackle on the other side took only one step back on a second-quarter punt, springing gaps for the Tech players. Add the slowness of punter David Wooldridge's execution (he prefers a three-step kick to a two-step approach), and the result was a punt block that led to a Hokie score.
"We did some good things on special teams," Bunting says. "We had two downed punts inside the 10. We had another field goal, and the protection was great. We certainly messed up one punt. If one guy doesn't block him, we have another who could. So there was more than one breakdown on that play. We were also slow with the punter. We're going to fix that this week."
Here's hoping the offensive and kicking game fixes are as effective this week as the defensive fixes were a week ago. There's a lot of football to play in 2006, and the Tar Heels will begin their preparations for Furman thinking of the defensive stops from the Tech game and the offensive yards there to be had.
"I still see us at 10-2," Mapp says. "That's the way I look at it."
"I come to work every day," receiver Jesse Holley adds. "I lead by example. I can come in Monday sulking and pouting and walk around and do all kind of negative things, and a lot of guys may follow. If that happens, it's a cancer and I can't allow that to happen. We have to pick each other up and prepare for the next game."
Send your questions about Tar Heel football to Lee Pace at leepace@nc.rr.com. Please include your first and last names and hometown. Individual replies are not possible because of volume of mail received, and names of recruiting prospects and commitments cannot be published on a school-sponsored site until the national signing day in February . The Q&A column will appear each Friday during the season.
