University of North Carolina Athletics
Lucas: Rapid Reactions
November 16, 2013 | Football, Featured Writers, Adam Lucas
1. Carolina has had impressive success making big punt return plays under Larry Fedora. After Ryan Switzer took a second quarter punt 65 yards for a touchdown, it gave the Tar Heels five punt return scores in Fedora's 22 games as head coach. For the sake of comparison, Carolina had five punt returns for touchdowns in the 65 games prior to that stretch-and several of those 71 games included the electric Brandon Tate, so it wasn't like the Tar Heels didn't have playmakers returning punts.
"He can make plays," Larry Fedora told Jones Angell on the Tar Heel Sports Network after the game. "With all those freshmen, they're starting to become so much more comfortable with the speed of the game and making the plays they know they can. Let's give a lot of credit to those other ten guys on the field, because they're selling out for those blocks, and he does the rest."
The success under Fedora is even more impressive considering that in addition to the five scores that counted, Carolina has also had at least one punt return for a touchdown called back by a penalty over the last two seasons.
Switzer, meanwhile, could be on his way to rewriting the UNC punt return record book. With 331 punt return yards in his true freshman season and two games remaining, Switzer is a virtual lock to elbow his way onto the list of top five punt return yardage seasons in school history. In addition, he's the first player in Carolina history with three punt return touchdowns in the same season. Only three players in school history had returned two punts for touchdowns in the same season--Charlie Justice (1948), Bosley Allen (2000) and Giovani Bernard (2012).
As you might remember, the coach in charge of the Tar Heel punt return team is Larry Fedora.
2. This is nice to be able to talk about: Carolina is 5-5 and firmly back in bowl contention. A somewhat surprising eight ACC teams are already bowl eligible: Florida State, Clemson, Boston College and Maryland from the Atlantic, and Virginia Tech, Georgia Tech, Duke and Miami from the Coastal. Either Pitt or Syracuse will also be eligible, because both teams have five wins and they still play each other. If the Tar Heels qualify, that will be at least ten league teams in the postseaon.
Looking two weeks down the road, it's possible that the Carolina-Duke game at Kenan Stadium on Nov. 30 could be not only for the Victory Bell, but also for a Belk Bowl (or maybe even all the way up to the Sun Bowl) bid, with the loser falling further down the ACC's pecking order.
The league may also going to need more slots in order to accommodate all the eligible teams, with possible destinations in St. Petersburg, Florida (Beef O'Brady's) or Dallas (Heart of Dallas), among others. Assuming Florida State plays in the national championship game, there are eight remaining league bowl tie-ins, which means the conference will almost certainly need to go hunting for other slots.
3. OK, so the Tar Heel defense went to sleep for a portion of the second half, including the Panther touchdown that made it 27-17, when Carolina had just 10 defenders on the field. But they made big plays when necessary, including rolling up seven sacks and getting a key stop on fourth and one deep in UNC territory when it appeared Pittsburgh was poised to tie the score with a minute remaining.
Thanks largely to those sacks, Pittsburgh managed just 46 rushing yards. That's the lowest rushing total by a UNC opponent this year, and the third-lowest rushing total of the Fedora era (Virginia Tech mustered 40 last year, and Elon managed just 42).
Kareem Martin started the season slowly, but after an incredible 3.5 sack performance at Pitt, he now has nine sacks for the season, which puts him tied for eighth on the UNC single-season sack list with William Fuller and Greg Ellis. As Fedora said, "Kareem was a beast today."
Getting just one more sack over the final two games would make him only the seventh Tar Heel in history with double-digit sacks, and that's an exclusive list that includes players like Lawrence Taylor, Julius Peppers, Greg Ellis and Robert Quinn.
Adam Lucas is the editor of CAROLINA.
