Extra Points: Tank On Empty

North Carolina Tar Heels defensive lineman Tyler Powell #95
University of North Carolina Football v Georgia Tech
Kenan Stadium
Chapel Hill, NC
Saturday, November 3, 2018

Photo by: Jeffrey A. Camarati

November 5, 2018 | Football, Featured Writers, Extra Points

By: Lee Pace

By Lee Pace

The final two minutes of Saturday's Homecoming game against Georgia Tech were ticking away, the last shovel of dirt turned on Carolina's pine box with a Yellow Jacket field goal that officially put the game out of the Tar Heels' reach in a 38-28 loss. On the defensive side of the Carolina team area, it looked like one part M*A*S*H unit and one part funeral wake.

On the far left side of the metal bench was Tyler Powell, whose thick taping jobs on both ankles, right-knee brace and left-shoulder harness had stood him well through three hours of battle, but in the end he played so hard and so long his body eventually gave out. His tank was not just empty. It was running a deficit.

Beside him was Jeremiah Clarke, his head bowed and covered by a white towel. Malik Carney was next, his white pants covered in dirt stains, his face in a blank stare looking seemingly into oblivion. Standing a few yards away was Jason Strowbridge, who played valiantly early in the game but was sidelined with an injury much of the second half. Linebacker Cole Holcomb and safety Myles Dorn were hunched over, heads in their hands, with defensive coordinator John Papuchis lodged in between them with his left arm draped around the back of Holcomb, who'd played an all-world game with 22 tackles and three forced fumbles.

The Tar Heel defense had just finished its annual expedition into the Georgia Tech chamber of horrors, with David Copperfield calling the plays and quarterbacks Tobias Oliver and TaQuan Marshall putting a pea under three shells and driving the opposition into a rubber room. It some respects, the Tar Heels' effort was status quo: the Yellow Jackets had averaged 39 points a game through eight contests and hit 38 Saturday; they were clicking off 6.5 yards a play before and notched 7.4 against the Tar Heels, a chunk of that average the result of an 86-yard touchdown pass.

But Papuchis noted that teams that had beaten Tech this year had dominated a sort of makeshift turnover war, a calculation adding fumbles, interceptions, three-and-outs and fourth-down stops. "Stolen possessions," he called them and decreed that in a possession-limited game as those against Tech tend to be, the opposition needed to steal at least three. And Carolina did just that and more, collecting three fumbles (and Carney returning one for a touchdown) and stoning Tech on two fourth-down gambles.

But in the end, Tech erased its three lost fumbles by snaring three Tar Heel passes, two coming in the fourth quarter after Carolina had fought back from a 28-10 deficit to tie the game. And Carolina introduced its second freshman quarterback of the year who showed some dexterity, presence and arm strength but was knocked from the game by injury—Cade Fortin from the Virginia Tech game a month earlier and Jace Ruder Saturday. You can't make this stuff up.

I stood behind these players and this coach and took it all in and tried to paint a picture for listeners on the Tar Heel Sports Network. I felt in my pocket for my iPhone and considered capturing the moment in a photograph. But it all seemed so intimate and painful I thought such an intrusion might be in bad taste, so I settled on asking some in the scene later what was going through their minds at that instant.

"Reality set in, we'd just lost the game," Dorn said. "It's tough. We felt like as a defense we did what we were supposed to do. The goals we set out, we did that and still didn't come out with a victory. That's tough."

"I was thinking, another game, how we came so close," Carney added. "We could just not get the win. Guys were upset how it happened again, fighting so hard, coming so close. Clawing, scratching, fighting, bleeding out there. We just come up short."

Papuchis said he wanted his players to know "I was right there with them" in that morose moment at game's end. "We're not as good as we need to be, but they played as hard as you can ask. It's a shame."

He spoke of his time as a graduate assistant coach nearly two decades ago with a Midwestern program that lost 10 games, one of them by 64 points.

"This is different, totally different," he said. "That team didn't stand a chance. This one does. Virginia Tech, Syracuse, today. We're right there. We're a solid football team with a bad record."

Powell was nowhere to be found the postgame interview area—the training room, whirlpool, a few aspirin and the deft hands of the Tar Heel medical staff certainly more of a priority. So the onus fell on his teammates to speak for the fifth-year senior who's had a roller-coaster career in Chapel Hill. Amid the drone of answering questions the ilk of "Where do you go from here?" the subject of Powell piqued the interest and sparked a flicker in the eyes from Dorn, Carney and Holcomb.

"I have the utmost respect for Tyler Powell," Holcomb said. "He is the definition of just putting your head down and working hard, working your butt off."

"For him to sacrifice his body and be hurting with aches and pains and continue play after play, it's something I look up to," Carney said. "He's a guy I will always want on my team."

"Ah man, I can't explain what he's been through on and off the field," Dorn added. "That's one person you love to be around because of the way he comes back and keeps fighting."

Powell's example will hopefully carry the Tar Heels far during the last three weeks of the season. Carolina is 1-7 and within whiskers against Virginia Tech, Syracuse and now Georgia Tech of flipping losses to wins. But in the end, a grotesque turnover margin tells the tale—19 turnovers against (11 interceptions and eight fumbles), and 11 in Carolina's favor. That's a deficit of an even one turnover a game, which seems miniscule but ranks 124th in the country among 129 FBS teams.

Turnovers late in games … dropped passes for key first downs … three quarterbacks out when you add Chazz Surratt … a defense that appeared reasonably solid in August but had to shift tailback Javonte Williams and lineman Avery Jones over from offense last week just to shore up depth … the hits keep on coming.

"You never know what's going to happen, and for us, everything's happening," Holcomb said. "We have to overcome it, though. We have to learn to overcome that kind of stuff. When we get it figured out …"

His voice trailed off. There was nothing left to say, no options remaining but coming into Kenan Football Center on Sunday and queuing up the Duke tape.

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.