Extra Points: Ten Spot

The turns of the decades have been rhapsodic for Carolina's football team in its annual grudge-match with Duke, that round number 10 spinning like a merry-go-round of color and laughter and happy times.

Take 1970, for example, the day Don McCauley broke O.J. Simpson's single-season rushing record. McCauley, the original war-daddy tailback in Coach Bill Dooley's ground-oriented offense, carried the ball 47 times for 279 yards and scored five touchdowns, finishing the season with a school-record 21 touchdowns that stands today. Knowing that Simpson's record was in view as the second half evolved, Dooley kept feeding the ball to McCauley long after the 59-24 landslide decision was secure.

"One of the coaches kept saying, 'Get back in,'" says McCauley, who finished with 1,720 yards and the NCAA record. "I'm thinking, 'Jeez, don't we have this in hand?' I wasn't sure what was going on. No one told me I was close to a record. I didn't know anything until I got the record and they announced it on the P.A. I thought, 'Well, isn't that nice?'"

Or 1980, the year freshman Kelvin Bryant raced for 199 yards and senior Amos Lawrence added 143 yards, both eclipsing the thousand-yard barrier as Carolina drubbed the Blue Devils 44-21 to cap its ACC championship season.

"I would like to have one back like Amos or Kelvin," Duke Coach Red Wilson said, "let alone two. We just couldn't stop them. It was their day."

And consider 1990, when Natrone Means rumbled for 256 yards and three touchdowns in a 24-22 Tar Heel win in Wallace Wade Stadium. That game concluded what to the naked eye would appear to be a rather pedestrian 6-4-1 season for the Tar Heels, but given it was the turnaround season during the early days of Mack Vol. I and assuaged some of the sting of Duke's 41-0 win a year earlier, it provided a rocket's worth of momentum into winter recruiting for the coaching staff and off-season conditioning for the players.

The Tar Heels would win 21 of the next 22 years over the Blue Devils. And Mack Brown since that day still hasn't lost to Duke, now with 10 straight victories over his two tenures at Carolina.

Saturday in a Wade Stadium devoid of fans amid the Covid-19 pandemic, the Tar Heels blared and bellowed with their own noise and coasted to a 56-24 win that wasn't nearly as close as the 32-point margin might indicate. It was 21-0 after one quarter and 42-7 late in the first half, the Tar Heels scoring seemingly at will with their kinetic blend of weapons and attack angles.

That point total is the second highest the Tar Heels have ever scored on Duke, the top figure coming in 2000 (there's that decade number again) when they notched 59 and Julius Peppers had a pick-six in a 59-21 win.

And after a torturous spell from 2016-18 of Carolina losing to N.C. State and Duke each season, order has been restored. The Tar Heels have waltzed over the Wolfpack by a combined margin of 58 points over two years and edged the Blue Devils in 2019 on Chazz Surratt's last-play interception and then walloped them on Saturday.

"These games are important to our fans, our alumni, our grassroots people who support the program," Brown said. "They go to church and work and the grocery store with fans from the other schools. It's important to me and our players that our fans can walk around with their chests stuck out and feel really good about their team.

"This Duke game is such an important game for our university. We have their name in our fight song. I am so proud the players understood that. They dominated the game."

That the Tar Heels dominated on offense was no surprise, and they have now ripped off five straight games with 500 yards or more. They scored touchdowns on their first seven possessions of the game. They were lethal on the ground with the Javonte Williams/Michael Carter tandem and how those tailbacks are generating comparisons to the great Carolina runners of old—from McCauley to Famous Amos to the "Natrone Bomb." Four games left, four touchdowns for Williams to tie McCauley.

"I'd love to see him catch me," says McCauley, who played a decade in the NFL with the Baltimore Colts and is now retired and living in Hillsborough. "That would be fun. Javonte and Michael both seem like such great kids. They're each other's biggest fans. It helps to make a hard run and then take a break and have someone just as good as you come in.

"Javonte seems like a humble kid, well-liked by his teammates. You watch his interaction after a touchdown and it's like he's embarrassed. I was like that. Hey, I didn't want all that attention. I think Javonte wants it deflected to his teammates."

The offense was also prolific through the air with Sam Howell enjoying a 235-yard passing day, Dazz Newsome snaring six balls and freshman Emery Simmons in his third week in the stead of an injured Beau Corrales proving to be a reliable receiver as well as a blocker in the running game.

Duke Coach David Cutcliffe acknowledged the Tar Heels' talent at the skill positions but made a point to salute the big guys in the mosh pit doing the dirty work.

"They've got an outstanding offensive front," Cutcliffe said. "They are really a powerful, good offensive football team all the way around. They're physically gifted, they're that good. They're one of the better offensive lines we've seen and we knew that going in."

But it was also encouraging to see the defense play well—save giving up touchdown runs of 46 yards to Mataeo Durant and 22 to Eli Pancol—in spite of yet another injury setback in the secondary, and for freshmen Myles Murphy, Clyde Pinder, Des Evans, Kaimon Rucker, Ja'Qurious Conley and Tony Grimes to play extensively. Safety Don Chapman missed the game after an injury late in the Virginia game the previous week, joining cornerback Kyler McMichael (now missed two games) and Storm Duck (missed six) on the injury list.

With Duke presenting a dangerous running game and still breaking in a transfer quarterback in Chase Brice, defensive coordinator Jay Bateman built his plan around defending the run with an extra outside linebacker (Chris Collins playing 44 snaps) and playing hardly any nickel coverage. They essentially told cornerbacks Patrice Rene and Dae Dae Hollins to play man-coverage and let everyone else attend to the run. The cornerbacks played well, Rene making four solo tackles (two for losses) and one break-up and Hollins snaring an interception.

"We've had three games where we had trouble stopping the run—Virginia Tech, FSU and Virginia," Brown said. "In all three, we were a little undersized upfront, and since we haven't had enough people to play, they knocked us around. We felt even though we were really thin in the secondary, we needed to get another big body in there and force them to throw the ball to beat us. Duke runs the ball really well. We gave up a couple of really long runs that we've got to get fixed. But I thought it was a great move by our defensive staff and it worked well."

Carolina was also solid in the kicking game, though its prolific offense limited the opportunities for the punt team (Ben Kiernan didn't punt at all against Virginia) and the Tar Heels never were stopped long enough to kick a field goal. But if the defense and special teams can continue to make incremental progress and the Tar Heels build toward another all-around solid performance in all three phases, it will set up an interesting stretch run of the season.

The Tar Heels' win following their victory in Chapel Hill last year meant there was no exchange of the Victory Bell needed. After the players clanged the bell and posed for photos, Brown noted the odd circumstances of 2020.

"They're used to celebrating with friends and family and going to dinner and having some fun," he said. "But now they have to protect themselves because of Covid. Their lives are certainly different, but that was a happy group in the locker room a few minutes ago."

But in some other crucial areas, what's gone around is coming back around—most notably during those lovely years divisible by 10.

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

Michael Carter

Don Chapman

Chris Collins

Ja'Qurious Conley

Beau Corrales

Storm Duck

Tony Grimes

Sam Howell

Ben Kiernan

Kyler McMichael

Myles Murphy

Dazz Newsome

Patrice Rene

Kaimon Rucker

Emery Simmons

Chazz Surratt

Javonte Williams

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