University of North Carolina Athletics
Turner's Take: Talking and Tackling
October 3, 2013 | Football, Featured Writers
Vic Koenning was exasperated Wednesday. The Carolina associate head coach had just seen his defense miss a coverage in the two-minute drill that ends every practice session. The Tar Heels were working with a player at a new position, and no one was communicating in the defensive backfield. "There were three or four other guys back there in the secondary that should have been trying to help him, and nobody said anything," Koenning said.
This was the same defense that had 37 missed assignments on 101 East Carolina plays last weekend, and communication is at the core of the problem. On one particular play, the Pirates snapped the ball with just nine Tar Heel defenders on the field. East Carolina did a tremendous job setting a high tempo, and Koenning thought his players understood that there often wouldn't be time to substitute between plays. The result was a 26-yard run for Vontavious Cooper and a burnt Carolina timeout before the next snap.
Koenning is particularly frustrated because he had been encouraged after the loss to Georgia Tech. Despite the 28-20 loss, the Tar Heels for the most part appeared to be in the right places, appeared able to defend against the Yellow Jackets triple-option. And then, playing against an offense not altogether unlike the one run by the Carolina offense, the Tar Heels looked lost. "The team played hard and played with reckless abandon, and we showed something that we hadn't really shown much of (against Georgia Tech), and then all of a sudden it was like, 'Boo,'" he said, "the whole other side of it." The frustration extends to the head coach and, understandably, the fans. "I wish there was something I could redo or undo or make do, but that's the way it is," Koenning said.
Sixteen games into his time in Chapel Hill, Koenning said it's unusual for the team to take so long to grasp the defensive concepts. The Tar Heels moved from the more traditional 4-3 front to the 4-2-5 under Koenning and defensive coordinator Dan Disch in 2012. There were certainly some growing pains a year ago, but Carolina found ways to make stops - even keeping East Carolina out of the end zone entirely - the same team that put up 55 last weekend. With athletes recruited specifically for their schemes, the Tar Heels are playing a lot of young players, but they also have some veterans that ought to display leadership capabilities. Koenning said the team desperately missed vocal leaders like Kevin Reddick and Sylvester Williams. "There's nobody from within pulling up," he said. "It's like when you try to move a couch. You get on one end of it and push and the front leg sticks. You get to the other leg at the other end and you pull and the back leg sticks. You've got to have someone pushing and someone pulling."
The answer then would appear to be obvious. Koenning is desperate for his players to talk amongst themselves, to figure out the proper coverages when they're on the field. "He's really annoyed with us not communicating with each other," cornerback Tim Scott said. "We made a big emphasis on talking before the play and making sure we know what to do, that way we won't have as many MAs (missed assignments)."
With a solution so simple, one could be forgiven for thinking that something deeper is at play. Maybe they're not talking because they just don't like each other. No so, said Scott. "We don't really have any tension between each other," he said. "But we figured as a defense, many people are just quite on the field, and a lot of the quiet guys ned to make sure they talk up also, because they're the guys that we need to hear the play from, or they just need to talk louder. We made a big emphasis on that this week."
Even if the communication problems get sorted out, Carolina still has a fundamental problem: tackling. East Carolina's offense spread out the Tar Heels, and the defense needed one player to make a tackle in space for a stop. Cooper seemed to bounce off the first contact every time he carried the ball. It's an issue that's becoming more prevalent as offenses seek to spread the field. "They throw a ball out there and a guy misses a tackle and it turns into an explosive play," Larry Fedora said. "It's glaring then. Back in the day when you played in the phone booth and you missed a tackle, nobody knew because everybody else is in the phone booth with you."
So then the act of tackling itself becomes much more important. "Tackling's strictly fundamentals, since elementary school," cornerback Jabari Price said. "You come to balance, you square up the ballcarrier, you wrap them up. It's that simple."
During the season, Teams are hesitant to practice tackling in scrimmages because of the risk of energy. The 'thud up,' or wrap up the ballcarrier to stop his forward progress and then the play is blown dead. Price said not taking those reps seriously during scout team practice or in pregame can hurt during games. "When you miss those tackles, that tends to reflect over in the game, so we have to do a better job of that," he said.
Fedora echoed Price's sentiment. "You do as good a job as you can with the fundamentals and the drills that we do every day, and then you expect your guys to do it on Saturday," he said.
The head coach also pointed to energy, the same attribute he felt was lacking in the game against East Carolina. "Tackling has to do with energy," he said. "If everybody's not running to the football, then those things are really glaring. When people are running to the ball, if you do make a mistake, somebody else is there to clean it up for you."
A.J. Blue attempted to light a fire under his teammates after last weekend's game. A defensive players-only meeting on Tuesday was called to help spur them on. At 1-3, the Tar Heels' season is not over. But for things to turn around, the defense is going to have to do a lot more talking and tackling.
"All I know to do is just to keep working hard," Koenning said. "I don't know what else you can do, besides just keep your nose down and go."
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