University of North Carolina Athletics
Walston: Secret Weapon
November 6, 2010 | Football
Nov. 6, 2010
efore Saturday evening, no Tar Heel team in history had known exactly what it would take to beat Florida State in Doak Campbell Stadium. Sure, they'd had ideas, but were never able to execute a winning game plan. Saturday, that was ancient history.
To beat a desperate Florida State team desperate to stay in the ACC's Atlantic Division race, it took a career performance from T.J. Yates. It took another supreme effort from Dwight Jones. It took halftime adjustments from the Tar Heel defense to shut down an efficient Seminole attack. It took luck. And it took what Butch Davis called a secret weapon: sophomore tailback Hunter Furr.
"We were waiting until the last three minutes of the Florida State game to spring him on everybody," Davis said with a laugh after the game. Furr had just three rushes, but when the Tar Heels needed a reliable runner to move the ball, he answered the call.
The snakebitten Johnny White broke his collarbone in the first half, ending the best season of his career. Shaun Draughn sprained his ankle in the second half and was unavailable the rest of the way. Ryan Houston, who has not played this season and could potentially redshirt, did not travel to Tallahassee. For the most important time of the game, Carolina was down to backup fullback and one-time tailback Anthony Elzy, and Furr. The sophomore (who could have been considered the fifth-string tailback) had spent the last six weeks on the scout team, mimicking upcoming opponents to prepare the Tar Heel defense.
After Carolina gave up a go-ahead score with less than six minutes to play, they trailed by one and had no choice but to answer. Elzy rushed over the right side for three yards, then caught a pass from Yates for six. Then, it was his turn to be the banged-up runner.
Enter Furr. Perhaps he'd had no idea that he'd actually get meaningful carries in Doak Campbell Stadium. Nevertheless, he was prepared. "In our pre-game running back speech, Coach Browning told us that your roles will change during the game unexpectedly, and you never know," Furr said. "Since I've been here Coach Davis has always preached you've got to watch film, you've got to be ready you never know when you're time's going to come, and I guess my time came."
Carolina used a quarterback sneak and then a 31-yard completion to Jones to get to the Seminole 36. To get to comfortable field goal range from there, it was up to Furr. A member of the Tar Heel track team, Furr took the ball on three straight carries for runs of 4, 12, and 11 yards, salting 96 seconds off the clock and moving to the 9-yard line. Elzy returned and Casey Barth eventually kicked a 22-yard field goal for the go-ahead score.
And that was Furr's impact on the game. Three carries, 27 yards, taking care of the football; mission accomplished. Furr is aware of the circumstances that led to his seeing the field, but didn't blink when called up on. "Unfortunately, some of our older guys went down, but they've done such a good job mentoring me, and I was just ready to go in there and try to run it."
Yates, the senior whose arm was responsible for 93 percent of the Tar Heel offense, was impressed with his young teammate. "Huge," Yates said of Furr, "How hard he ran, how much confidence he had, how much aggression . . . [Some] guys would have come into the game like that kind of timid and stuff. He was running with his head down. He was running confident."
Saturday night, it took one more thing for Carolina to steal a win in Doak Campbell Stadium: Luck. Seminole returner Greg Reid took the kickoff back 50 yards to the Tar Heel 45. With 44 seconds to play, it seemed inevitable that Florida State would set up and nail a game-winner. But Dustin Hopkins was wide right from 39 yards and Carolina escaped the clutches of heartbreak.
Had Hopkins' kick been true, Furr's performance would have been a simple footnote; the leading rushing performance on a bad rushing day. But with a Carolina victory, his impact will resonate beyond the box score. "He's a smart kid," Davis said. "He came in, we did the things that he knew, that we felt like pretty confident that he'd be able to execute, and he did a great job."
Turner Walston is the managing editor of Tar Heel Monthly. Turner's weekly Tar Heel football podcast, The Walkthrough, is available on iTunes.
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