University of North Carolina Athletics
Extra Points: Half Full, Half Empty?
September 18, 2016 | Football, Featured Writers, Lee Pace
by Lee Pace
Gene Chizik has spoken recently about “rugged days” and “abrasive” defense team meetings. He loathes the kind of “incompetence and ineptness” he's seen in his Carolina defense at times this month against Georgia, Illinois and James Madison. He insists the Tar Heels have one loss because of errors on defense, allowing no truck for some offensive misfires two weeks ago in the Georgia Dome. He grants his unit no wiggle room nor a wink and a nod to develop at a leisurely pace because the Tar Heel offense forces the record keepers upstairs to scribble lines like 2x – 4 (x + 1)(2x – 4) – 5(x + 1) just to keep up.
“I don't care what our offense does,” Chizik said. “I've made it clear to them. Our job is not to worry about how many points our offense scores. That's irrelevant. If you do not have the mindset of winning games on defense, you're playing for the wrong guy, in the wrong place.”
Early Saturday evening in the Tar Heel locker room, one side was sated and satisfied with a number-crunching performance. The offense pummeled James Madison for 635 yards, eight touchdowns on eight drives and perfection on its first seven third-down conversions.
The defense, meanwhile, exhumed a sigh of relief. The Dukes plowed through the Tar Heels for touchdowns on their first three drives before Carolina finally got off the field with a forced punt early in the second quarter. Larry Fedora lamented it's bad news when it takes until the second quarter to have a memorable play on defense—that a sack by freshman linebacker Dominique Ross—and that he sensed a marked lack of energy from the opening whistle.
In the end, the Tar Heels prevailed with a 56-28 win over JMU and now have the table set for an ACC run of Pittsburgh, Florida State, Virginia Tech, Miami and Virginia before a late-October bye week.
“I promise you there's half a football team in there right now that is really disappointed,” Fedora said. “No matter that I tell them, 'Hey, we won a football game and we'll grow and learn.' There's a lot of guys in there right now that are disappointed in how they played.”
It won't be a pleasant week on one side the ball. Already the Tar Heels are reeling along the line with various problems that have bumped Dajaun Drennon, Tyler Powell, Nazair Jones and Tomon Fox out of the lineup for one game or more. They are working newcomers Jonathan Smith, Jason Strowbridge, Patrice Rene, Myles Dorn, Allen Cater and Ross into the mix. Cole Holcomb has seen plenty of special teams play but is new in the weakside linebacker slot.
Saturday on a hot afternoon in Kenan Stadium that had more than one player taking nausea medication on the sidelines, the Dukes brought an offense averaging 68 points a game and treated the Tar Heels if they were Central Connecticut State. They engineered ball-control drives of nine plays and 11 plays for scores to open the game and then, just as Illinois did one week ago, caught Carolina in a busted assignment with a scoring pass to a running back on a wheel route—a “200-year-old mistake,” as Chizik said of a play that has been rehearsed repeatedly during fall camp.
“I don't like looking at mediocrity, what we're putting on the field now,” Chizik said. “I'm not pulling up, not letting up, not accepting any of this mediocre defense. We can step up or it will be a long season. I'm not going to keep looking at it.
“You produce as a player or you're just taking up space. I don't want to use, 'Oh, we're young at linebacker' or anything like that. I don't want to hear it. Your job in college is to go out and produce, that's what you do when you get on the field. A handful of guys are productive, a majority are below average in my opinion.”
Carolina hurt itself with post-snap penalties, the defense getting four unsportsmanlike conduct/personal foul calls, though one against Dalton resulted when the sophomore tackle responded to a Dukes lineman hovering over him and making a borderline kicking motion after JMU's first score. And the Dukes' lone touchdown after the first quarter was helped by a delay-of-game call on Carolina when the Tar Heels shifted pre-snap and JMU's offense jumped. The officials ruled it “disconcerting” and that linebacker Andre Smith had yelled “Go” in an unfair baiting of the offense's cadence when in fact he yelled “Move.” Fedora argued the call vigorously but to no avail.
“We've got a lot of things to correct, starting with penalties,” Fedora said. “We'll get to those right off the bat on Sunday. That's unacceptable. We can do things within the game and screw up, but we're not going to screw up after the whistle.”
Certainly the offense continues to evolve into a high-octane gobbler of real estate. Counters, jet sweeps, bubble screens, flea-flickers, go-routes, zone reads—the Tar Heels used them all Saturday in averaging 9.8 yards a snap against a Dukes defense that consistently played two safeties low and give Mitch Trubisky room to throw vertically. Running backs Elijah Hood and T.J. Logan are pounding out the yards and vigorously protecting the ball, and Trubisky has made 91 passes without an interception. Carolina's only two turnovers in 2016 have come on a muffed punt at Illinois and by a reserve receiver fumbling a pass late in Saturday's game.
“The O-line did a great job all day, the receivers made plays, the running backs ran the ball well,” Trubisky said. “It was great to be back in Kenan Stadium. That's the way we want to play offense. It was a great day, it was fun to sling the ball around like that.”
It's certainly not by design that the Tar Heels are top-heavy on offense in year-five of Fedora's program. The offense is multi-talented and the kicking game is quite solid, but everyone is preparing for the day the defense will have to fill the void.
“If you're a really good football team, you do that, you take care of each other,” Fedora said. “Nobody hits on all cylinders all the time.”
Now on the cusp of ACC play, the Tar Heel offense is ranked 20th in the country in scoring offense at 42.7 points a game and 70th in scoring defense at 28. The defense has played well in stretches in three games; it's flitted about in ineptness during chunks of all three as well.
“I have lot of conflict on who we are right now,” Chizik said. “I'm not sure. It's a choice, a choice by every player: 'If you choose to win five games this year because we stink on defense, it's your choice. When you choose to be good and choose to execute the defense, that's what we can be.”
Chapel Hill writer Lee Pace has covered Tar Heel football for 26 years through “Extra Points” and a dozen as the Tar Heel Sports Network's sideline reporter. He has just published a book on Kenan Stadium, “Football in a Forest.” Follow him at @LeePaceTweet and contact him at leepace7@gmail.com.
