University of North Carolina Athletics
Turner's Take: Big Time
November 7, 2015 | Football, Featured Writers, Turner Walston
By Turner Walston
It started with about 85 seconds left on the game clock. With their team assured of a 66-31 victory over Duke and continuing to strengthen its grip on the ACC's Coastal Division, the fans in Kenan Stadium began to chant.
“TAR!”
“HEELS!”
“TAR!”
“HEELS!”
All season long, the Tar Heel players had been preaching that they had each other's back. Saturday, they saw that a sold-out Kenan Stadium did, too. The energy was palpable as the chant shifted to a certain song by Steam that hit number one in 1969 as the fans bid their rivals across the field a safe journey home.
“It sounded beautiful,” Tar Heel linebacker Shakeel Rashad said. “It was loud. If you come out into a packed stadium, it reminds you of why you wanted to play college football in the first place. Growing up, watching college football on Saturdays just loving it and seeing the atmosphere that goes around it, you come out into a packed stadium and your juices just get flowing, ready to go.”
The Tar Heels were indeed ready to go. After Duke's opening drive stalled near midfield, the Carolina offense struck in a big way. On their first play from scrimmage, Elijah Hood took a hand-off from Marquise Williams. Hood took a step, sold it, and pitched the ball back to Williams. Ryan Switzer was all by himself at the 45-yard line and ran the other 55 yards for the touchdown.
That particular play call, the flea-flicker, was supposed to be the play that opened last Thursday's game at Pitt. When Pitt's safeties didn't come up in run support, the call was scrubbed. This week, Williams got the word that the flea-flicker would be called again. His eyes got big. Friday night, he prayed that the Blue Devil safeties would try to fit their gaps in run support. They did. Game on.
“We saw what we wanted in the secondary, and we thought we had that play against them,” Tar Heel head coach Larry Fedora said. “When we looked down and saw that it was there, we just went with it. The guys executed it flawlessly. Great throw. A lot of moving parts to that play, and the guys executed, and I am proud of them.”
Williams had easily the finest game of his Tar Heel career. On Saturday, he tied Darian Durant's 79 total career touchdowns with the pass to Switzer, then set the bar even higher with four more scores on the afternoon. He was 23 of 35 passing for 494 yards and four touchdowns, and rushed for 30 yards and another. And he came out of the game for good with 1:41 left in the third quarter.
“Coach Heck (Keith Heckendorf, quarterbacks coach) always talks about, 'If you're decisive, you're accurate,'” Williams said. “If you're indecisive, I'm going to hesitate and the ball's going to be incomplete. But I watched so much film, I knew the defensive coverages they were going to run. I knew where I was going to go with the ball.”
Late in the second quarter, Duke had the chance to get within two touchdowns and had crossed into Tar Heel territory thanks to a pass interference call. But two plays later, Dominquie Green intercepted a Thomas Sirk throw, and the offense took over with 19 seconds in the half. Many teams would have taken a knee, content to let the clock expire, take a three-touchdown lead into the locker room and get the ball back to start the third quarter. Larry Fedora went for the jugular.
A quick throw to Quinshad Davis got the ball across midfield. Williams missed Davis on the next play, but subsequently hit Bug Howard for 49 yards as the clock ticked down to one second remaining. “It was like, 'Let's see what'll happen,'” Fedora said. “We threw a couple, we completed one, and then went for another one and didn't hit it and said, 'What the heck? Let's see.' We still had two timeouts, so it was worth taking a chance.”
Was it ever. Carolina took all the momentum into the locker room. By that time, they'd amassed 486 yards of total offense. Coming into Saturday, the most Duke had allowed in 2015 was 452, in a four-overtime win over Virginia Tech.
The Tar Heels came out with a scoring drive to open the second half. In the meantime, Williams set the school record for passing yards in a game on the first drive of the third quarter.
It was that kind of a day. After his first touchdown pass, Williams overheard a Duke defender tell Switzer that it was going to be a long day, meaning the Duke secondary would have their hands full. They did.
Last Sunday, Carolina found itself ranked 21st in the AP and Coaches polls, but when the College Football Playoff rankings were released this week, the then 7-1 Tar Heels weren't in the Top 25. Fedora said he didn't mention it and he hadn't heard the players talking about it, but perhaps the disrespect was on their minds. This team seems to enjoy playing with a chip on its shoulder.
Nevertheless, the Tar Heels wanted to put on a show in a sold-out Kenan Stadium. That they did. “It wasn't about making a statement,” Williams said. “It was more about getting a win in the Tar Pit, getting wins for our fans and our family and our staff. It's not about the college playoffs or trying to make people recognize us. We've just got to come out and execute and keep winning games, and eventually they're going to have to recognize us.”
The fans in Kenan Stadium certainly recognized the effort their Tar Heels had put forth. This time of year, thoughts typically wander down Skipper Bowles Drive toward the Dean Smith Center, and this year the Tar Heel men's basketball team is ranked #1 in the preseason. But Saturday proved that there's still a lot on the table for the Tar Heel football team. The Coastal Division title is in their sights. Continue to take care of business, and the Tar Heels will play on the first weekend in December in the ACC Championship Game.
It's big-time football in Chapel Hill. It's a great feeling for the players, the coaches, the staff and the fans. For the first time in a long time, it feels like everyone is on the same page. Remarkably, there's just one home game left in 2015, next Saturday against Miami. The 8-1 Tar Heels deserve a repeat performance from the fans.
“It felt great,” Nazair Jones said of Saturday's experience. “I've never seen a packed-out game at this stadium. Even when I was a recruit, I've never heard it that loud before. It was just a great atmosphere. Everybody in this stadium has our back, and we have that one little corner way over there that doesn't like us, that's a great feeling to have.”
Players Mentioned
