University of North Carolina Athletics
Turner's Take: Thursday Football Notebook
September 10, 2015 | Football, Featured Writers, Turner Walston
By Turner Walston
Marquise Williams received a number of phone calls over the weekend from fellow quarterbacks, encouraging him to pick his head up after a tough performance last Thursday in the loss to South Carolina. One of those calls came from his predecessor at Carolina, Bryn Renner. Another came from the Denver Broncos' Peyton Manning.
“He gave me a text and told me to give him a call, and I did,” Williams said. “He said 'Just go out and play your game.' I felt like it was over. It just felt like you just lost everything, but once I got that call it was just like, man, I'm back at it.”
Williams has been a regular attendee of the Manning Passing Academy in the summers between seasons. This year, Manning noticed that Williams looked healthier than he had been before, coming off of hip surgery. Williams' three interceptions were costly last Thursday, but he appreciated the pep talk from Manning. “He asked me who still holds the rookie interception record, and I said 'I'm assuming that's you,' and he said 'You're right. I still hold that record.' That's very exciting just to hear from somebody like that, just to give you a call and just to holler at you after a tough performance.”
Tar Heel head coach Larry Fedora appreciated one quarterback imparting that wisdom into another. “That's got to be a tremendous help, because I can only say so much; I didn't play the position,” Fedora said. “That position is pretty special . . . You get too much credit when you win and you get too much blame when you lose, and that's just he way it is. That's the nature of the beast, so you have to understand that, and that's why you have to stay consistent (with) the way you handle everything, good or bad. When people are patting him on the back, it ought to be exactly the same way.”
After dropping a game that they felt they should have won, Williams and his teammates are eager to hit the field for another chance at a win on Saturday in the home opener against North Carolina A&T. The FCS Division Aggies visit Chapel Hill for the first meeting between the two schools after a 61-7 win over Shaw last weekend. It's different from the high-profile Belk College Kickoff last week, but for the Tar Heels themselves, it's business as usual.
“A lot will be said about how we approach this team,” Fedora said. “This team can beat us just like any other team can beat us, so it's all about our attitude and mindset, the way we approach a football game. It should be no different than the way we approached the last one. That's what we're striving for, consistency. The next game is the most important game, and that's all there is.”
For the Tar Heel student-athletes, Saturday represents an opportunity to get back out on the field. There's no going back to last Thursday, no erasing the loss from the ledger, but there is a chance at evening the record and moving forward. In the first game of 2015, the Tar Heels showed promise, albeit in a loss. The second game of 2015 must represent another step forward.
“That 0-1 is a bad taste in all our mouths, especially (with) how the year ended last year,” said defensive tackle Nazair Jones. “We were so eager to get our first win, and everybody put up a great effort, but now it's time to actually get the job done on both sides of the ball and get the 'W.' It doesn't matter if we play good if we lose.”
A lot of the talk about Carolina football in the off-season centered around changes on the defensive side of the ball. New coaches, new scheme, new attitude. Last year, the Tar Heels struggled to simply tackle, to finish plays. Thursday, they showed improvement in that regard. “That's something that Coach (Gene) Chizik has preached since he got here, tracking and taking correct angles to the ball, and I feel like that's something that we did really well on Thursday,” linebacker Cayson Collins said. When a player doesn't get to the ball as he's supposed to, it's marked down as an 'NOS,' for 'Not Our Standard.' “Our first practice coming out, we had like 180 NOSs on the first practice,” Collins said. “After the game, we had 20, so i think that was a huge improvement, breaking old habits from last year.”
The work to break old habits continues this weekend in Kenan Stadium. Kickoff is set for 6 p.m. on ESPN3. “I can't wait,” Jones said. “It's just going to be a blast playing in front of our fans in our stadium for the first time this year, so they can get a good look at us and (we can) show how much we've been working as a defense and offense and a team in general. I just can't wait. It can't come fast enough.”
Players Mentioned
