Extra Points: Cutting Edge

September 7, 2020 | Football, Featured Writers, Extra Points

By: Lee Pace

Mack Brown said when he took the Carolina coaching job in late 2018 that he wasn't patient enough to wait to recruit for three years to load his roster enough to line up and dominate opponents physically. Which is why he was attracted to Phil Longo and Jay Bateman to run the Tar Heel offense and defense, respectively.

"We don't have free agency," Brown says. "You have to take what you've got, and you've got to make your players good enough. I saw in Phil and Jay two guys where were exceptionally bright and had the ability to create an edge.

"I believed that when I hired them and believe it even more after watching them for a year."

Longo's version of the "Air Raid" offense was prolific in the Tar Heels' 7-6 introductory season. With freshman quarterback Sam Howell at the controls, the Tar Heels averaged 33.08 points and 474 yards per game, 188 on the ground and 286 via the pass. Howell hit 61 percent of his throws for 3,641 yards, 38 touchdowns and only seven interceptions. Carolina was 12th in the nation in total offense, remarkable for the first year of a new system, new staff and new team. Howell's 3,347 yards and 35 touchdowns were better than Trevor Lawrence's freshman year at Clemson (3,280, 30); Philip Rivers at N.C. State (3,054, 25); or Robert Griffin III at Baylor (2,091, 15 passing; 843, 13 rushing).

And the 2019 team lacked one essential element—the threat of a running quarterback. The Tar Heels played most of the year with Howell as the only recruited, scholarship quarterback, thus forcing Longo to preach to Howell to throw the ball away, slide or scat out of bounds before taking a hit.

"I really like what I've seen with our offense—a lot of moving parts that make it difficult to defend," Brown says.

"Don't Blink" is Longo's rally cry and plays to the idea of playing fast and playing instinctively. Though the passing element is prolific, that's never at the expense of having a stout running attack that can gobble up the tough yard in the red zone or take advantage of a defense skewed to stop the pass.

"There is a time and a place in the game where you have to be able to run the ball," Longo says. "We're always going to have that physical component in our offense. Always."

Longo was certainly disappointed in the spring of 2020 when the Tar Heels' entire spring practice season was wiped out by the Covid-19 pandemic. His priority list included grooming quality back-ups for Howell and developing a more aggressive mindset along the blocking front.

"One benefit of being in this offense is we're not reinventing the wheel," Longo says. "We'll add some wrinkles, make some upgrades and improvements. I totally expect in our second year a major upgrade from the foundation we laid last year. Typically in this offense over five or six programs where I've run it, the second year is usually a touchdown a game better and 90-100 yards better."

One month into preseason camp, Longo was happy with the depth at wide receiver, the potential of backup quarterbacks Jace Ruder and Jacolby Criswell, the versatility of senior tight end Garrett Walston, the one-two punch at tailback with Michael Carter and Javonte Williams and a core of six offensive linemen.

"It's exciting when you have a lot of guys coming back," he says. "I refer to those guys as 'coaches.' They know the system, they know what to do and they can pass it along to the younger guys."

The Tar Heel defense benefitted in Bateman's first season with having returning stalwarts Jason Strowbridge, Aaron Crawford and Tomon Fox anchoring the unit. But the secondary was wafer-thin amid a deluge of injuries, the Tar Heels were starting a converted quarterback at linebacker and they lacked experienced depth across the board.

Nonetheless, the Tar Heels saw Chazz Surratt emerge as an all-star linebacker and Bateman's patchwork unit on the back end held up reasonably well. That Bateman correctly anticipated Duke's potential game-winning touchdown try and snuffed it with an interception lent credence to the evolving idea that while others are playing checkers, he's playing chess.

"The coaches I appreciate the most are the ones who do not say, 'Our players aren't good enough,'" Brown says. "The thing that I was impressed with so much at Army is that Jay took lesser players and through disguises and different looks and different packages, he gave a lot of people trouble. He has the ability to get players free to the quarterback that really don't have that rushing ability. And then when he has a great one like Jason Strowbridge, he can put him in positions where he can more readily get there."

Long gone are the days of vanilla defense and an approach like the "Tampa 2" mode of having two deep safeties, playing lots of zone, trying to generate heat with four down linemen and keeping everything underneath.

"If you're just dropping in what I call 'vision coverage' where I'm seeing the ball and I'm breaking, you used to be able do that and be pretty good," Bateman says. "The Tampa Bay Buccaneers won a Super Bowl doing that. Today, though, the ball comes out so fast and quarterbacks are so accurate and receivers are so good in space. You go tackle it and say you did a good and you're second-and-four. I'm not great at math, but I know if they're doing that every time, they're going to get a first down."

One lynchpin of Bateman's philosophy is that everyone is a blitzer.

"Our defense is like rebel warriors, we kind of come from everywhere and we try to bait you into things, cause confusion, cause havoc, infiltrate from within," he says. "You try to create negative plays, you try to create incompletions, you try to create sacks. If you do that, you're in pretty good shape."

Bateman and his defensive coaches will certainly have more weapons to wield this fall, especially in the secondary. Myles Wolfolk, Patrice Rene, Trey Morrison and Cam Kelly started early season games but were lost to injury and now are back. Clemson transfer Kyler McMichael is eligible. Bateman says Storm Duck, a freshman rushed into service a year ago, is the most improved player on the unit.

"The biggest thing we've noticed is, the second just looks different," Bateman says. "The guys back, the new guys—we just look different. I really feel good about that group."

The third prong of Brown's three-legged stool is special teams, which is getting a makeover in 2020 under Jovan Dewitt, who's coaching outside linebackers and coordinating all elements of the kicking game.

In 2019, the Tar Heels were 83rd nationally in net punting, 85th in punt returns and missed two potential game-winning field goals. Brown believes that better depth and an overall reboot under Dewitt will give Carolina an edge over last fall. He says the Tar Heels were "okay" in the kicking game in 2019 and quickly adds, "In my position, you don't want to be okay in anything.

"We've pretty much given Jovan his choice of anyone he wants," Brown continues. "We'll have more depth and better players on special teams. To be a great team, you have to block some punts and score some points. We weren't a factor on punt returns at all, and we had a great punt returner in Dazz Newsome. I feel like we need to block more kicks, we need to return more punts. I never felt we were going to block a punt or return a punt. I never felt we presented a fear factor for anybody in those areas for anybody."

Dewitt has run special team operations for seven years, most recently under Scott Frost at Central Florida and Nebraska, and before that worked with Bateman at Army West Point. His Black Knight punt return unit blocked seven kicks in two years over the 2014-15 span, and his Nebraska units blocked four punts and returned two punts for touchdowns.

"We try to make it competent yet simple," Dewitt says. "We can handle a variety of situations, but I want it simple enough I can grab somebody of the bench and say, 'Hey, you need to go in there and do this right now.' And you're not worried about them being able to execute the job. I believe that simple minds make for fast feet."

Don't blink.

Everyone's a blitzer.

Simple minds make for fast feet.

Those three doctrines should make for interesting times watching three phases of Tar Heel football in 2020 and beyond.

Chapel Hill based writer Lee Pace has covered Tar Heel football since 1990 and has been part of the Tar Heel Sports Network broadcast crew since 2004.