Extra Points: Number Crunching

By Lee Pace

The statistical outliers emanating from Saturday's Carolina vs. Duke football game could fill up a library book from the 1950s (an era when the Blue Devils beat Carolina seven years running) or a 16-gigabyte flash drive from the modern era (which has seen Duke rip off three straight wins and five of seven over Carolina). The Blue Devils escaped with a 42-35 win that leaves the Victory Bell in Durham and the Tar Heels searching for answers in a season marked by losses of seven, three, three, 10, 10 and seven points.

* Carolina had its longest rushing play ever against Duke when Dazz Newsome took a handoff from Nathan Elliott late in the first half and, with the entire offensive line flowing right, cruised left, bolted up field, streaked past a Blue Devil linebacker and outran everyone else, 84 yards to the house.

* The Tar Heels piled up a remarkable 272 yards on the ground in the first half using a handful of formations, personnel groups and motions they'd not used all year in an effort to find anything that might help them leap that dank and dark close-but-no-cigar moat to victory. Even removing Newsome's chunk, Carolina ran for more than eight yards a clip before intermission. The Tar Heels scored touchdowns on four of seven first-half possessions, with sophomore tailback Michael Carter accounting for 122 yards of his eventual total of 148.

"We did some great things on offense in the first half, I think we got off to a great start," Elliott said. "We were running the ball really well, the running backs had a great day. The O-line blocked really well in the first half."

* That 272 yards promptly went poof in the third quarter, the Tar Heels getting only 13 yards on the ground in that quarter and having four successive three-and-out possessions.

"They're a good team, they had some plays and some good calls on," Elliott said. "They made some good adjustments at halftime. We just have to execute better. At the end of the day, they made more plays than we did. It's very frustrating. I've never experienced anything like this before."

* Led by a quarterback who came to campus without a scholarship offer, the Blue Devils and said QB Daniel Jones converted 10-of-12 third-down conversions through one point early in the second half. That's tough to do against air in a seven-on-seven drill in August.

* Jones scored one touchdown on a gallop of 61 yards and set up another on a jaunt of 68 yards. The first was a called QB draw with the seas opening perfectly for Jones, the second on a fake handoff on a jet sweep that momentarily baited the defense to flow to its left with Jones darting right. Each was marked by poor help from the Carolina safeties. Jones' 186 yards rushing and 361 passing gave him 547 yards total offense, the most a single player has ever accounted for against Carolina in 130 years and 1,301 games.

"He's a good football player, give him a lot of credit," Carolina coach Larry Fedora said. "I think he's one of the best players in the league because he can run and he can throw. He had close to 200 yards rushing. He sat in empty and picked us apart. He's a good quarterback.

"When you have guys in coverage where their eyes aren't on the quarterback and somebody gets out of a gap and he finds it, he can make you pay. That's what he did today. "

* Duke's 629 yards total offense was the most since Louisville led by Heisman Trophy winner Lamar Jackson amassed 705 early in the 2017 season.

* But most painful for the Tar Heels was a double-digit total of penalty flags—10 infractions for 115 yards. That's the sloppiest performance for Carolina since a 13-for -124 total in the season opener against California. After two penalty-marred games to open the year in losses to Cal and East Carolina, the Tar Heels had battened-down their attention to those details and entered the Duke game ranked No. 25 in the nation in fewest penalties committed with six per game.

But Tyler Powell jumping from head-up on the Duke center prior to the Blue Devils' first snap of the game for a five-yard offside penalty would be a harbinger of things to come.

Then in a 28-28 game toward the end of the first half, a 34-yard pass to Dyami Brown took the ball to the Duke 40 yard line. But Jake Bargas was called for a personal foul for blocking a Blue Devil trailing the ball by 10 yards, negating the gain. Carolina punted, Duke got the ball and took a 35-28 lead at halftime after Jones ran a quarterback draw 61 yards to the end zone.

"We had way too many penalties, too many critical penalties that came back to bite us in the end," Fedora said.

"The biggest thing was the penalties," Elliott concurred. "You convert a couple of those third downs and they get called back, or you convert a big play right there before half and you get it called back, stuff like that is so frustrating."

* And the Tar Heels have a 1-8 record going into their final two games—at home against Western Carolina next Saturday and N.C. State the following weekend. That matches last year's mark at the same juncture before beating Pitt and WCU and that from 2003 before the Tar Heels beat Wake Forest in a 2-9 season.

The template for the postgame search for answers, explanations and lights at the end of the tunnel was established early in the season and has continued unabated through a blurry stretch of Saturdays.

"You can find the easy way out and just give up," senior defensive end Malik Carney said. "That's the easy way out. Of course it's harder to keep trying to do the right things and keep working and trying to get a win. We've just got to keep our head down and keep grinding."

Newsome was asked how difficult it is to keep stressing and straining week after week for that one miniscule edge that might lift you over the top.

"It's tough," he said. "We work hard every day in practice, we're just not making enough plays. One missed assignment here, one missed assignment there. We're just like one play away from winning the game."

He was asked if were ready for the season to be over.

"No ma'am. I'm ready to keep taking advantage of every opportunity I have."

Fedora hated it that the only celebratory kernels the Tar Heel seniors can take from the Duke rivalry are the fading memories of 25 and 35-point landslides over the Blue Devils back when they were freshmen in 2014 and '15.

"It hurts for these seniors," Fedora said. "They'll never have this opportunity again in their life. I hurt for them. This team hurts for them. But I don't worry about our guys' morale. They've shown what they have inside them, they've fought their butts off today. They'll continue to fight. That's who they are. That can never be taken from them."

Meanwhile, the 2018 season lopes into its last two weeks with the Tar Heels getting crunched by the numbers.

Carolina graduate Lee Pace (1979) has written "Extra Points" since 1990 and reported from the sidelines for the Tar Heel radio network since 2004. Reach him at leepace7@gmail.com and follow him @LeePaceTweet.

Players Mentioned

Jake Bargas

Malik Carney

Michael Carter

Nathan Elliott

Dazz Newsome

Tyler Powell

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