University of North Carolina Athletics
Turner's Take: True Grit
September 27, 2016 | Football, Featured Writers, Turner Walston
By Turner Walston
It took nearly 51 minutes of game time, but in Saturday's thrilling win over Pitt, the Tar Heel offense and defense finally locked in and played to their potential, displaying the qualities needed to earn a hard-fought win in the Coastal Division.
Carolina trailed by 13 points with nine minutes and ten seconds left in the fourth quarter on Saturday when the game turned. The Mitch Trubisky-led game-winning drive would begin some six minutes of game clock later, but it was the Tar Heel defense that made the stops to enable such a comeback.
The Carolina offense had just gone three and out, and Pitt, which had punted just twice on the day, had the ball with the chance to go up three scores. The Panthers had put 415 yards of total offense together, and looked to continue to move the ball on the ground, salt away the clock and win the game. The Tar Heel defense had other plans.
"We just came together," junior defensive tackle Nazair Jones said. "I know me, Dre (Smith) and Des (Lawrence) got together, and we got everybody up, and we all said that we can correct all of our wrongs in this game if we just [buck] up in that situation and hold them to no points or field goals and just give our offense a chance, because we all know the fireworks they can do. It was just about being a man in that situation and not going down easy, if we were going to go down."
They didn't go down, as you now know. Pitt had gone three and out just once on their nine possessions to that point. The Panthers ground out four yards on two carries, then missed a pass attempt. They went four yards in 96 seconds before being forced to punt.
Trubisky threw the ball six straight times on the ensuing Tar Heel possession, and after an Elijah Hood rush to the one-yard line, he hit Bug Howard for a touchdown, despite a defensive pass interference penalty, to pull the Heels within six after the extra point.
Still, there was work to do on defense. Pitt used 109 seconds of clock this time, but gained just two yards. Their drive stalled at the Carolina 27. The Tar Heels used a timeout to get the ball back at their own 37, the game within reach, to set up that memorable drive.
"I think it just goes to just guys doing their job and wanting to do it well," Jones said. "We've got to be together. We've got to play together better and it's just like sometimes we'll have the DBs doing really good and the D line messes up, or the linebackers do good and the DBs mess up. We've got to be working good together at the same time, and cutting out those mental errors."
Then, as you know, it was time for the offense to play to its potential, for Trubisky to rise to the moment –his moment– and complete that improbable comeback. They went 63 yards in 17 plays, completing three fourth-down conversions, using those two timeouts and taking three minutes and thirty-three seconds to do it. Trubisky threw the ball 15 times. The offense overcame an illegal block penalty that cost them 11 yards and a sack that cost them another 11. Ideally, they wouldn't have needed such a miraculous finish, but when the circumstances called for it, they rose to the challenge.
"I know I definitely still made some mistakes, but when we had to have the play, we were able to make it," Trubisky said. "And it wasn't just me and my play; it was all 11 guys on that field, especially the o line up front giving me time. Sixteen and seventeen, however many plays it was, that's a long drive for the offensive line, so it takes a lot of heart to just give me time, and the receivers made plays when the ball was in the air, and the backs did their job as well, so it was a whole team effort and we made the plays when we had to, to win our game."
As there always are, there were mistakes identified in Sunday's film study. The Tar Heels created a lot of problems for themselves, Larry Fedora said, but those things continue to be correctable, issues that can be worked out in practice and ideally applied to the field on Saturday. "We know if we keep playing the odds like that, we may not end up in the win column," the head coach said.
But the bottom line is, the Tar Heels found a way to win, despite the first three and a half quarters. "The great thing about it is I think our team showed a lot of grit," Fedora said. "They showed a lot of perseverance. They played well together and played for each other, and so that was probably the biggest result to come out of that football game."
And now, moving forward, the Tar Heels have that experience to draw on. The 2016 Tar Heels now can point to the final nine minutes of Saturday's win to see what happens when they pull together, when each player does his job.
"I think the biggest thing is us overcoming the deficit and playing well at the end and fighting," Jones said. "I think that's something that we can definitely take on to the next game, because we don't know if we're going to be in that situation again, but at least we know we've got a group of guys that's going to fight to the end."
