University of North Carolina Athletics
Extra Points: Rainy Day Blues
November 16, 2008 | Football, Featured Writers, Lee Pace
Nov. 16, 2008
by Lee Pace, Extra Points
About once a decade it seems the Tar Heels stage some late season maneuvers in College Park for high stakes--like control of the hills around Gettysburg or the beach at Normandy, for example. National rankings, ACC standings, bowl bids, coach-of-the-year votes and final month mojo hang in the balance of a game between Carolina and the University of Maryland.
There was the Waterloo of the Dick Crum era on Oct. 29, 1983, when the Tar Heels were ranked third in the nation, sported a 7-0 record but fell prey to the arm of a future NFL Pro Bowl quarterback named Boomer Esiason. The Terps scored 18 straight third-quarter points and withstood a controversial onside kick attempt at the end of the game by the Tar Heels to escape with a 28-26 win. It was downhill from there for the '83 Heels (they lost three of their next four) and the Crum era itself (just one meager winning season through his dismissal in 1987).
Nine years later, Mack Brown's program was developing a head of steam in its fifth year, and the Heels were giddy after back-to-back upsets over Virginia and Georgia Tech in Kenan Stadium. They had just slipped into the national rankings at No. 22 and ventured north for a Halloween afternoon clash with the Terps. Tied at 24-all early in the fourth quarter, Carolina used the power of Natrone Means to lure the Maryland defense to one side of the field on an apparent sweep, then Means pitched the ball to Randall Felton coming around the backside. Felton scored on the 12-yard reverse and secured the Tar Heels' 31-24 win. They went on to finish 9-3, beat Mississippi State in the Peach Bowl and reside in the Top 25 for most of the next five years.
And now the Tar Heels returned to Byrd Stadium in November 2008 with yet another kettle of fish. A win and they are a step closer to a potential ACC championship game berth and a Fed-Ex Orange Bowl bid to that winner (and wasn't it interesting seeing Dick Baddour kibitzing at length with four gentlemen attired in bright orange blazers pre-game?) The 7-2 Tar Heels, who had dropped a pair of three-point games, against the 6-3 Terps, who had beaten three nationally-ranked squads but been hammered by Virginia and nipped by some directional school in Tennessee.
"It's going to be an NFL game," offensive coordinator John Shoop said last week of his conversations with quarterback Cameron Sexton. "I told Cam, if they have the lead, if we have the lead, don't worry. This sucker's coming down to a four-minute drill, a two-minute drill. It's coming to the fourth quarter. They have a good offense and a good defense. They are multiple and talented on defense. We have to throw the ball, run the ball. We're going to have to play-action, we're going to have to fool 'em on some stuff. We've going to use every tool in our tool belt."
Shoop's diagnosis was spot-on. The game did in fact come down to the last four minutes. A field goal attempt by Carolina's Casey Barth clanged off the left upright in the third quarter, denying the Heels three points, and one from 26 yards by Maryland's Obi Egekeze split the uprights with 1:42 to play to cap a 19-play, 73-yard climatic drive. Those were the only points in the second half and were enough for Maryland to emerge with a 17-15 victory in a wet, mushy, gunky, sloppy game.
"We simply didn't play well and we didn't capitalize on any of the opportunities we had," Tar Heel coach Butch Davis said. "We had opportunities for interceptions on defense. We had opportunities on third down to get them out, and we didn't do it. We had opportunities to score more points. We missed a field goal, and we got the ball down in the red zone and had to settle for field goals. We had some big play opportunities and we just didn't capitalize on them."
The weather was a major storyline and the conditions were reminiscent at times of those you find on the coastline of Scotland--black clouds and rain in one direction, gray mist in another, sunshine popping out from underneath creamy yellow clouds on yet another compass point. The forecast early Saturday morning called for a 90 percent chance of rain and thunderstorms, so we were lucky that it had been mostly dry through early afternoon.
But as soon as the teams took the field around 2:30 for opening warm-ups, the skies opened up and the next two hours offered a patchwork of varying extreme conditions. Fortunately, the squalid cold front had moved through by halftime, leaving the air dry but certainly not the field. Players were hitting the slick grass and sliding five yards like kids playing on snow. Sexton lost the handle on the ball on one scramble and turned possession over to the Terps, and Davis eschewed one potential field goal try in the second half from 50 yards because the heavy, wet ball wasn't flying like it would under normal circumstances.
"The weather conditions didn't help us at all," Davis said. "It negated a little bit of our passing and a little bit of our speed that we thought maybe would be an advantage. But by no stretch of the imagination can you take anything away from Maryland. They played well and they deserved to win the game."
Given Miami's win over Virginia Tech Thursday night, the Heels came into the game with only two losses in the ACC's Coastal Division and the opportunity to clinch the division title with wins over Maryland, N.C. State and Duke to finish the season. But the Terps have division titles of their own to play for (Maryland is now leading the ACC Atlantic Division with only two losses). The Terps have been stellar at home this year (now 6-0) and have beaten four ranked teams (Cal, Clemson, Wake Forest and Carolina).
"We had a great opportunity in front of us, and we failed to capitalize," linebacker Mark Paschal said. "Winning the league is not completely out the possibilities, but we had the situation we wanted with three weeks left and we knew we were in the driver's seat. We just let it get away from us."
It got away because Maryland controlled the football for 40 minutes, 29 seconds; because Carolina began two drives at its 40 yard-line or better and two others at the Maryland 33 and 44 and got only two field goals from them; because the Heels wasted a marvelous piece of trickery with Bobby Rome throwing 44 yards to Brooks Foster deep onto Maryland's end but failing to turn it into points; and because the Tar Heels were 1-of-11 on third downs while allowing Maryland a 50 percent conversion rate.
The most painful third downs came on the Terrapins' game-winning drive when they cashed in three third downs and QB Chris Turner scrambled on fourth-and-five for yet another new set of downs.
"We just couldn't get them off the field on the final drive," Paschal said. "We haven't been great on last drives this year. We held them to a field goal, which is somewhat of a positive. But we couldn't turn it around at the other end."
"We had at least three opportunities to get off the field," Davis said. "The killer is the fourth-down scramble for the first down. All we have to do is get an incomplete pass or a sack and the game's probably over. We come home mad that we played poorly and happy that we won."
Three points to Virginia Tech. Three points to Virginia. And two points to Maryland. Carolina has lost three games in 2008 by an average of less than a field goal. The Heels followed the Virginia Tech loss with a win at Miami and the Virginia defeat with a thumping of Boston College. They'll need a similar recovery this week against resurgent N.C. State, a team that has found its sea legs after wholesale injuries in August and September.
"This is when we play our best, when we come out after something like this," Sexton said. "We rebound better than anybody. I might sound like a broken record after our losses; we're going to work hard and I know we are going to play better next week. This team knows how to respond to adversity. That is what we hang our hat on and that is what we are going to do."
Davis was asked Sunday if he and Shoop gave any thought to replacing Sexton (10-of-24 with one last-minute interception) and if they would consider it this week. Davis was quick with a reply: "No."
Then he elaborated: "Certainly yesterday Cam did not play as well as he had in the previous games, but he had a lot of help in that," Davis said. "The protection at times wasn't good. Guys dropped balls. We just didn't play as well. There is no one single individual that ever wins you a ball game or loses one. The games we have won this season we have won as a team, in all three phases. We have not hurt ourselves, we have not beaten ourselves. Yesterday we didn't follow that blue print."
So now we look forward to the Wolfpack coming to Chapel Hill on Saturday and the next "Clash of the Decade" with Maryland. And that's not histrionics, either. Because they are now lodged in opposite divisions of the ACC, the Tar Heels and Terps don't play again until 2012, and the Heels don't return to College Park until 2013. That's a long time to harbor a grudge.
Chapel Hill writer Lee Pace is in his 19th year of chronicling Carolina football through "Extra Points." He'll answer questions about the Tar Heels weekly throughout the season through his "Extra Points Mailbag" and on the pregame show for the Tar Heel Sports Network. Email him at leepace@nc.rr.com and include your name and hometown. No recruiting questions, please.
