University of North Carolina Athletics
Extra Points: Haunted
November 2, 2020 | Football, Featured Writers, Extra Points
By Lee Pace
"October was always the least dependable of months ... full of ghosts and shadows."
Novelist Joy Fielding
The clock struck midnight Saturday in Charlottesville, Va., and this most inauspicious of Halloweens amid a worldwide Covid-19 pandemic slipped into history, taking with it a litany of demons for Carolina's football team. With their infamous Franklin Street Halloween carnival canceled, students and townies alike were left to don their Michael Myers and black widow masks, munch candy corns and watch from home as the Tar Heels dropped a 44-41 decision to Virginia in the 125th rendition of this oldest rivalry in the South.
The goblins first came to roost courtesy of the Virginia Cavaliers. In a performance reminiscent of a 1-3 Florida State team popping the Tar Heels just two weeks ago, the Cavaliers bounded off the mat with their 1-4 record and threw a couple of demons at the Tar Heels in the form of a savvy quarterback named Brennan Armstrong (three touchdown passes and a 23-yard TD run) and a relentless linebacker named Charles Snowden III (10 tackles, four sacks). They were opportunistic (turning two Tar Heel fumbles into quick touchdowns) and aggressive (Coach Bronco Mendenhall called for a fake punt at midfield late in the game, its success sealing the home team's win).
"This means the world," Snowden said. "In Scott Stadium, the way we won, the way it took resilience. It was huge. Nights like these I'll never forget."
The ghosts were also generated by the Tar Heels themselves. A normally sure-handed receiver muffs a punt late in the first half, giving Virginia a chip-shot scoring drive. A defensive player calls a time out in the second quarter, leaving the Tar Heels without the ability to stop the clock when they forge to the Cavalier two yard-line with seconds left before intermission. A linebacker takes a bad angle on a simple swing pass and allows a Cavalier receiver open field for a 71-yard touchdown. And the Tar Heels simply cannot make a stop on defense during a haunting fourth-quarter juncture, allowing Virginia an agonizing 15-play, nine-minute drive that provided the winning margin via a field goal.
"We made a lot of mistakes, we left a lot of points out there," said QB Sam Howell. "I had a turnover, we had a muffed punt, we kicked a lot of field goals in the red zone. There are a lot of things we need to clean up on our side of the ball."
And the game officials added to Tar Heels' nightmare as well, as an inadvertent whistle on a play early in the second quarter wiped a touchdown by Howell off the board. The subsequent do-over for the Tar Heels yielded only three yards and Carolina settled for a field goal.
But no matter the recipe for this Wahoo stew Carolina was forced to choke down under a full moon, the Tar Heels have to evolve individually and collectively to turn the scales of all these narrow defeats the other way. Make a field goal. Field a punt. Throw the ball away under duress.
"We've got to start winning these games that are close at the end," Tar Heel Coach Mack Brown said. "It's not good enough to fight back and be close. Close doesn't help you. You've got to win. We've got to learn to win on the road. It's there, it's real, we've just got to do it."
The Tar Heels are 11-8 in Brown's season and a half following his return to Chapel Hill. All eight losses have been by seven points or less, with two of them in overtime. Both losses this year have been by identical three-point margins and both have been road games with kick-offs around 8 p.m.
Afternoon games at home? Gotcha covered. Night on the road? Work in progress.
"We had great effort and too many mistakes," Brown said. "We've got to start learning to win on the road. We said that after Florida State. Obviously, have to learn to win close games at the end. We thought they might fake the punt at the end. We have it contained on one side, but we don't on the other side. If we stop that, we still have a chance to win the game. And we think we're going to win the game with one timeout and plenty of time.
"But we have to take care of the ball and we have to force more turnovers. That's kind of been the story of our year so far."
The Carolina offense continues to generate the blinking lights and clacks and dings of a pinball machine. The Heels reeled off 536 yards of offense (that's four straight games of that many or more). Howell's 443 passing yards were the third highest total in Carolina history, and Dyami Brown's 240 yards receiving were just seven shy of Randy Marriott's school mark for a single game set in 1987. And with their double-edge sword of aerial fireworks and ground-game artillery, the Tar Heels can adjust week to week depending on the poison needed.
"Virginia just decided, 'We're not going to let you run,' and they left one-on-one situations outside," Brown said. "We took advantage of it and that gave us a chance to hang in the game."
I made the point tying up the broadcast with Jones Angell on the Tar Heel Sports Network as midnight approached that Brown wouldn't be here if all were well with the Carolina program before him. On offense, all's good. On defense, there's lots of work left to do, but it's nothing that won't be solved with the kind of player procurement and 365-day a year development that worked for Brown in the 1990s and is working now. Saturday's venture into the hills of Virginia harkened to Carolina's trip to Charlottesville in 1991 during the fourth year of Mack Vol. I. The Tar Heels dropped a 14-9 decision to a Virginia team that during that era under Coach George Welsh was a mainstay in the Top 20.
"We're at the stage in our program where we need to go on the road and upset a team that's better than us," Brown said. "We were in this one to the end but we just made too many little mistakes to win the ball game."
He made that statement on Oct. 19th, 1991. It sounded right then, as do words to that effect on Halloween 2020.
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.
"October was always the least dependable of months ... full of ghosts and shadows."
Novelist Joy Fielding
The clock struck midnight Saturday in Charlottesville, Va., and this most inauspicious of Halloweens amid a worldwide Covid-19 pandemic slipped into history, taking with it a litany of demons for Carolina's football team. With their infamous Franklin Street Halloween carnival canceled, students and townies alike were left to don their Michael Myers and black widow masks, munch candy corns and watch from home as the Tar Heels dropped a 44-41 decision to Virginia in the 125th rendition of this oldest rivalry in the South.
The goblins first came to roost courtesy of the Virginia Cavaliers. In a performance reminiscent of a 1-3 Florida State team popping the Tar Heels just two weeks ago, the Cavaliers bounded off the mat with their 1-4 record and threw a couple of demons at the Tar Heels in the form of a savvy quarterback named Brennan Armstrong (three touchdown passes and a 23-yard TD run) and a relentless linebacker named Charles Snowden III (10 tackles, four sacks). They were opportunistic (turning two Tar Heel fumbles into quick touchdowns) and aggressive (Coach Bronco Mendenhall called for a fake punt at midfield late in the game, its success sealing the home team's win).
"This means the world," Snowden said. "In Scott Stadium, the way we won, the way it took resilience. It was huge. Nights like these I'll never forget."
The ghosts were also generated by the Tar Heels themselves. A normally sure-handed receiver muffs a punt late in the first half, giving Virginia a chip-shot scoring drive. A defensive player calls a time out in the second quarter, leaving the Tar Heels without the ability to stop the clock when they forge to the Cavalier two yard-line with seconds left before intermission. A linebacker takes a bad angle on a simple swing pass and allows a Cavalier receiver open field for a 71-yard touchdown. And the Tar Heels simply cannot make a stop on defense during a haunting fourth-quarter juncture, allowing Virginia an agonizing 15-play, nine-minute drive that provided the winning margin via a field goal.
"We made a lot of mistakes, we left a lot of points out there," said QB Sam Howell. "I had a turnover, we had a muffed punt, we kicked a lot of field goals in the red zone. There are a lot of things we need to clean up on our side of the ball."
And the game officials added to Tar Heels' nightmare as well, as an inadvertent whistle on a play early in the second quarter wiped a touchdown by Howell off the board. The subsequent do-over for the Tar Heels yielded only three yards and Carolina settled for a field goal.
But no matter the recipe for this Wahoo stew Carolina was forced to choke down under a full moon, the Tar Heels have to evolve individually and collectively to turn the scales of all these narrow defeats the other way. Make a field goal. Field a punt. Throw the ball away under duress.
"We've got to start winning these games that are close at the end," Tar Heel Coach Mack Brown said. "It's not good enough to fight back and be close. Close doesn't help you. You've got to win. We've got to learn to win on the road. It's there, it's real, we've just got to do it."
The Tar Heels are 11-8 in Brown's season and a half following his return to Chapel Hill. All eight losses have been by seven points or less, with two of them in overtime. Both losses this year have been by identical three-point margins and both have been road games with kick-offs around 8 p.m.
Afternoon games at home? Gotcha covered. Night on the road? Work in progress.
"We had great effort and too many mistakes," Brown said. "We've got to start learning to win on the road. We said that after Florida State. Obviously, have to learn to win close games at the end. We thought they might fake the punt at the end. We have it contained on one side, but we don't on the other side. If we stop that, we still have a chance to win the game. And we think we're going to win the game with one timeout and plenty of time.
"But we have to take care of the ball and we have to force more turnovers. That's kind of been the story of our year so far."
The Carolina offense continues to generate the blinking lights and clacks and dings of a pinball machine. The Heels reeled off 536 yards of offense (that's four straight games of that many or more). Howell's 443 passing yards were the third highest total in Carolina history, and Dyami Brown's 240 yards receiving were just seven shy of Randy Marriott's school mark for a single game set in 1987. And with their double-edge sword of aerial fireworks and ground-game artillery, the Tar Heels can adjust week to week depending on the poison needed.
"Virginia just decided, 'We're not going to let you run,' and they left one-on-one situations outside," Brown said. "We took advantage of it and that gave us a chance to hang in the game."
I made the point tying up the broadcast with Jones Angell on the Tar Heel Sports Network as midnight approached that Brown wouldn't be here if all were well with the Carolina program before him. On offense, all's good. On defense, there's lots of work left to do, but it's nothing that won't be solved with the kind of player procurement and 365-day a year development that worked for Brown in the 1990s and is working now. Saturday's venture into the hills of Virginia harkened to Carolina's trip to Charlottesville in 1991 during the fourth year of Mack Vol. I. The Tar Heels dropped a 14-9 decision to a Virginia team that during that era under Coach George Welsh was a mainstay in the Top 20.
"We're at the stage in our program where we need to go on the road and upset a team that's better than us," Brown said. "We were in this one to the end but we just made too many little mistakes to win the ball game."
He made that statement on Oct. 19th, 1991. It sounded right then, as do words to that effect on Halloween 2020.
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
Wide Receiver
/ Football
Quarterback
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