University of North Carolina Athletics
Extra Points: Flipped
October 19, 2020 | Football, Featured Writers, Extra Points
By Lee Pace
The characters and circumstances have certainly evolved over the two dozen years since Mack Brown last coached a football game in Tallahassee.
It's Brown who's now the elder statesman in college football, not his 1990s-era rival Bobby Bowden. "Coach Brown is an incredible coach and an incredible person," offered his opponent, Mike Norvell, who was not quite 15 years old when the Tar Heels and Seminoles clashed on a rainy afternoon in 1996. "I've got a ton of respect for the man and the coach."
It was the Tar Heels in the nation's top five when they took the field at 7:45 p.m. in Doak Campbell Stadium, the Seminoles trying to find some ballast during a 1-3 start and witnessing the ignominy of The Tallahassee Democrat referencing the Seminoles' 42-26 defeat at Notre Dame last Saturday as "a competitive loss."
And it was the Tar Heels who had the marquee player at quarterback in Sam Howell and the Seminoles, with their storied history of Heisman Trophy winners Charlie Ward, Chris Weinke and Jameis Winston at the position, juggling three players in early games before apparently finding a trigger man in the nimble-footed Jordan Travis.
Brown and the Tar Heels planned and hoped for a script as follows: Pop them in the face getting off the bus, establish who's who in this new world order and go from there.
"They had a lot of talent, we knew that coming in, but they lacked confidence," Brown would say later.
Indeed, from the uber-powerful Javonte Williams getting uncharacteristically stoned on the Tar Heels' first possession to the Tar Heels yielding a blocked punt and the Seminoles' newfound quarterbacking maestro running 23 yards for a score, Florida State had just the lift the team and its first-year coaching staff needed.
"That set all momentum against us and gave them confidence," Brown said. "And that's one thing they were lacking. We didn't need to get them off to a good start. And we did that. They took the punch to us. We needed to jump on them."
A Tar Heel team that had scored a touchdown on its first possession in each of three wins to open the season couldn't find the end zone until late in the first half, despite having a 2:1 time of possession advantage over those first 30 minutes. That 31-7 deficit at intermission proved too much for Carolina to overcome as the Tar Heels absorbed a 31-28 loss, despite storming back in the second half and driving into Seminole territory late in the game. A pass to Williams with under a minute to play that would have put Carolina in field goal position at the FSU 31 bounced uncharacteristically off the junior tailback's hands.
"The first half was awful," Brown said. "We dug ourselves a hole. We had two blocked punts and an interception for a touchdown. Obviously, we weren't ready to handle the surge they had in the first half. And then the kids settled down. I've never been prouder of a group to come back and play like they did in the second half. Coach Royal at Texas always said when your team plays like that, they didn't lose, they just ran out of time, because we obviously dominated the second half."
The Tar Heels in each of three phases contributed to that first-half deficit. Special teams yielded two blocked punts, leading to 10 points. The offense was jammed on a fourth-and-1 at the FSU 24 and on Carolina's next possession, Howell launched a pick-six on a swing pass to Williams. And one particularly painful defensive lapse saw the Seminoles strike for 75 yards on five plays in 45 seconds at the end of the half. The Seminoles averaged 10 yards per play to 5.4 for Carolina, with six Travis completions accounting for an average of 30 yards a pop. He passed for 182 yards and ran for 68.
"We're not good enough at this stage of our program to take a half off," Brown said. "Florida State dominated the first half like we dominated the second half. It ended up being an even game because of that. It came down to one or two plays at the end. I told them at halftime it was going to be the largest comeback in Carolina history. And I really felt like we were a play or two away from making that happen."
They certainly were on offense with Howell having another colossal game, throwing for a season high 374 yards (second most of his career) and three touchdowns; with Williams churning out 186 total scrimmage yards, including a career-high 67 in pass receptions; with Beau Corrales out-jumping and out-fighting Seminole defenders for catches of 40 and 33 yards on one third-quarter scoring drive; and with tight end Garrett Walston chipping in with two catches for 54 yards.
"We settled down and took what they were giving us," Howell said. "They were playing two safeties deep to take the deep ball away. We ran the ball pretty well and when we did that, we got some one-on-one matchups we didn't see in the first half.
"I'm proud of the way we fought in the second half. I felt in the locker room at halftime we'd pull it out in the end."
And they bounced back on defense with the secondary heeding coordinator Jay Bateman's admonishment in the dressing room to have better eye discipline, to quit looking at the oft-scrambling Travis and instead for each defender to pay attention to his assigned receiver in coverage; with safety Trey Morrison making a nifty one-handed snare in the third quarter; and with Tomari Fox leading the team in tackles with nine, including a key third-down stop with under three minutes to play to get the ball for the offense one final time.
"The second half is the team we want to be—in fact, that's probably the best we've played as a team all year," Brown said.
That crescendo Saturday night was preceded by voluminous flashbacks during the week to Brown's first tenure at Carolina, when he built the program into back-to-back Top 10 seasons in 1996 and '97 but found the Seminoles at the height of Bowden's dominant decade (ACC titles from 1992-99, national title 1999) square in their path. Both teams were terrors on defense, but the Seminoles were a whisker better on offense and the kicking game, ergo a 13-point FSU win in Tallahassee in '96 and an 18-point victory in '97.
Brown appreciated the attention his team was getting but acknowledged its No. 5 national ranking was "probably a little ahead of where we are." The Tar Heels had yet to prove they could consistently win as the hunted rather than the hunter. There's a big difference, particularly when you're playing in prime-time in front of a pandemic-restricted crowd of around 20,000 that nevertheless was rowdy enough to cause Howell some communication issues late in the game.
"We haven't proved we're ready to line up and win every game every week," he said. "You expect that of Clemson and Ohio State, of Alabama and Georgia. People do not consider us in that group yet. We're not a team everyone is talking about."
And as Saturday's first half proved, the Tar Heels aren't quite in that conversation yet. But there's this: Moments after the final gun, one national college football writer deemed the outcome a "signature win" for Mike Norvell in his fifth game as the Seminoles' head coach.
It's one thing to get scheduled for homecoming. This is better, and it's certainly flipping the script on many levels.
Chapel Hill based writer Lee Pace (Carolina '79) has written "Extra Points" since 1990 and has been part of the Tar Heel Sports Network broadcast crew since 2004. Write him at leepace7@gmail.com.
The characters and circumstances have certainly evolved over the two dozen years since Mack Brown last coached a football game in Tallahassee.
It's Brown who's now the elder statesman in college football, not his 1990s-era rival Bobby Bowden. "Coach Brown is an incredible coach and an incredible person," offered his opponent, Mike Norvell, who was not quite 15 years old when the Tar Heels and Seminoles clashed on a rainy afternoon in 1996. "I've got a ton of respect for the man and the coach."
It was the Tar Heels in the nation's top five when they took the field at 7:45 p.m. in Doak Campbell Stadium, the Seminoles trying to find some ballast during a 1-3 start and witnessing the ignominy of The Tallahassee Democrat referencing the Seminoles' 42-26 defeat at Notre Dame last Saturday as "a competitive loss."
And it was the Tar Heels who had the marquee player at quarterback in Sam Howell and the Seminoles, with their storied history of Heisman Trophy winners Charlie Ward, Chris Weinke and Jameis Winston at the position, juggling three players in early games before apparently finding a trigger man in the nimble-footed Jordan Travis.
Brown and the Tar Heels planned and hoped for a script as follows: Pop them in the face getting off the bus, establish who's who in this new world order and go from there.
"They had a lot of talent, we knew that coming in, but they lacked confidence," Brown would say later.
Indeed, from the uber-powerful Javonte Williams getting uncharacteristically stoned on the Tar Heels' first possession to the Tar Heels yielding a blocked punt and the Seminoles' newfound quarterbacking maestro running 23 yards for a score, Florida State had just the lift the team and its first-year coaching staff needed.
"That set all momentum against us and gave them confidence," Brown said. "And that's one thing they were lacking. We didn't need to get them off to a good start. And we did that. They took the punch to us. We needed to jump on them."
A Tar Heel team that had scored a touchdown on its first possession in each of three wins to open the season couldn't find the end zone until late in the first half, despite having a 2:1 time of possession advantage over those first 30 minutes. That 31-7 deficit at intermission proved too much for Carolina to overcome as the Tar Heels absorbed a 31-28 loss, despite storming back in the second half and driving into Seminole territory late in the game. A pass to Williams with under a minute to play that would have put Carolina in field goal position at the FSU 31 bounced uncharacteristically off the junior tailback's hands.
"The first half was awful," Brown said. "We dug ourselves a hole. We had two blocked punts and an interception for a touchdown. Obviously, we weren't ready to handle the surge they had in the first half. And then the kids settled down. I've never been prouder of a group to come back and play like they did in the second half. Coach Royal at Texas always said when your team plays like that, they didn't lose, they just ran out of time, because we obviously dominated the second half."
The Tar Heels in each of three phases contributed to that first-half deficit. Special teams yielded two blocked punts, leading to 10 points. The offense was jammed on a fourth-and-1 at the FSU 24 and on Carolina's next possession, Howell launched a pick-six on a swing pass to Williams. And one particularly painful defensive lapse saw the Seminoles strike for 75 yards on five plays in 45 seconds at the end of the half. The Seminoles averaged 10 yards per play to 5.4 for Carolina, with six Travis completions accounting for an average of 30 yards a pop. He passed for 182 yards and ran for 68.
"We're not good enough at this stage of our program to take a half off," Brown said. "Florida State dominated the first half like we dominated the second half. It ended up being an even game because of that. It came down to one or two plays at the end. I told them at halftime it was going to be the largest comeback in Carolina history. And I really felt like we were a play or two away from making that happen."
They certainly were on offense with Howell having another colossal game, throwing for a season high 374 yards (second most of his career) and three touchdowns; with Williams churning out 186 total scrimmage yards, including a career-high 67 in pass receptions; with Beau Corrales out-jumping and out-fighting Seminole defenders for catches of 40 and 33 yards on one third-quarter scoring drive; and with tight end Garrett Walston chipping in with two catches for 54 yards.
"We settled down and took what they were giving us," Howell said. "They were playing two safeties deep to take the deep ball away. We ran the ball pretty well and when we did that, we got some one-on-one matchups we didn't see in the first half.
"I'm proud of the way we fought in the second half. I felt in the locker room at halftime we'd pull it out in the end."
And they bounced back on defense with the secondary heeding coordinator Jay Bateman's admonishment in the dressing room to have better eye discipline, to quit looking at the oft-scrambling Travis and instead for each defender to pay attention to his assigned receiver in coverage; with safety Trey Morrison making a nifty one-handed snare in the third quarter; and with Tomari Fox leading the team in tackles with nine, including a key third-down stop with under three minutes to play to get the ball for the offense one final time.
"The second half is the team we want to be—in fact, that's probably the best we've played as a team all year," Brown said.
That crescendo Saturday night was preceded by voluminous flashbacks during the week to Brown's first tenure at Carolina, when he built the program into back-to-back Top 10 seasons in 1996 and '97 but found the Seminoles at the height of Bowden's dominant decade (ACC titles from 1992-99, national title 1999) square in their path. Both teams were terrors on defense, but the Seminoles were a whisker better on offense and the kicking game, ergo a 13-point FSU win in Tallahassee in '96 and an 18-point victory in '97.
Brown appreciated the attention his team was getting but acknowledged its No. 5 national ranking was "probably a little ahead of where we are." The Tar Heels had yet to prove they could consistently win as the hunted rather than the hunter. There's a big difference, particularly when you're playing in prime-time in front of a pandemic-restricted crowd of around 20,000 that nevertheless was rowdy enough to cause Howell some communication issues late in the game.
"We haven't proved we're ready to line up and win every game every week," he said. "You expect that of Clemson and Ohio State, of Alabama and Georgia. People do not consider us in that group yet. We're not a team everyone is talking about."
And as Saturday's first half proved, the Tar Heels aren't quite in that conversation yet. But there's this: Moments after the final gun, one national college football writer deemed the outcome a "signature win" for Mike Norvell in his fifth game as the Seminoles' head coach.
It's one thing to get scheduled for homecoming. This is better, and it's certainly flipping the script on many levels.
Chapel Hill based writer Lee Pace (Carolina '79) has written "Extra Points" since 1990 and has been part of the Tar Heel Sports Network broadcast crew since 2004. Write him at leepace7@gmail.com.
Players Mentioned
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