Barth II?
Time will bear out what I am about to write but this could very well be the game we all look back at as the one where Butch Davis and the program got over the hump. One week after a crushing loss in their first ever home game on Thursday night, the Heels traveled to Blacksburg facing an unenviable situation. Playing against Virginia Tech in Lane Stadium on ESPN with the Hokies coming off a loss everyone assumed, myself included that this would be a ho-hum affair. UNC would show up, make a few decent drives but ultimately be roughed up at the line by the Hokie defense who would squeeze some points out a few turnovers giving VT enough for the win.
Welcome to the wackiness of the ACC.
First off, T.J. Yates. For all the nasty things literally thrown his way not to mention criticism upon criticism as recently as the 2nd half of this game, the junior stepped up in the 2nd half and led this team on two-time prolific drives. The 2nd of those drives tied the game and included Yates completing a pass on 3rd and 7 to extend the drive. Three plays later, Butch Davis opted to not make the same mistake as a week ago when he chose to punt it away near midfield but instead goes for it on 4th and 7. Yates again delivered hitting Greg Little for 19 yards. UNC went on to tie the game but in the process Yates atoned for the atrocious INT that resulted in UNC giving the lead away in the first place. In short Yates and the offense did their job, especially Little who finally is showing signs of the brilliance we thought he had in him. It was nice to see the offense keep up their end of the bargain on the same night the defense kept up theirs. From the drive that opened up the 7-0 lead before the half to the 2nd TD on a drive that included so many wrinkles in the playcalling, much maligned UNC offensive coordinator John Shoop should absolutely be congratulated for making all the right adjustments in this game. UNC was not afraid to use anyone and everyone to catch passes and run the football. When the run was stagnant in the first half, Ryan Houston was used as a blunt object to punish the Hokie defense. That seemed to open things up for Shaun Draughn and even Little saw some time rushing the football. Shoop chose to use a variety of misdirections in an effort to keep the ball moving on the ground and it worked. The mixture of rushing plays was enough to throw the Hokies off balanced which in turn eventually bought Yates time to work.
The defense was outstanding. It was incredible to see both units play well at the same time. The defense that got run over in the 2nd half of last week’s game against FSU not only showed up in both halves but shrugged off a couple of tough scoring drives by Virginia Tech to eventually make the big play in recovering a Ryan Williams fumble to setup Casey Barth for the game winner. UNC collected three sacks on the very mobile Tyrod Taylor to go along with six tackles for a loss. Ultimately the defense came up when it counted the most. Even the two Virginia Tech TDs came on late down conversions and where both borderline calls. The Heels lived up to their defensive reputation holding the 17th ranked rushing offense in the country to 95 yards, well below the 203 ypg the Hokies came in averaging. Only two teams this season have held VT below 100 yards rushing in a game. Nebraska and #2 Alabama.
This game was perfect redemption after the way the Heels fell last week. Of course now last week’s loss sticks in the craw a bit but given that FSU was winnable and this was considered a sure loss, UNC is exactly where they would have been anyway had it come according to expectation. Now the Heels only need to get two more wins to qualify for a bowl game. Of the four games left, three of them are winnable versus Duke, BC and NC State. Butch Davis is 2-0 versus Miami and the Canes come to Chapel Hill. If the defense plays as well as it did in Blacksburg, winning against Miami is certainly possible. The key for UNC is to ride the momentum of this game and play some consistent football the rest of the way.
It is amazing what a difference one week makes or simply winning a big game like this does to the outlook on the season. Additionally, UNC has two extra days to prepare for Duke. Time will certainly tell if this is the watershed win UNC fans were looking for to move the program forward but now it feels good to get a huge win in football.
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2 to go, the most crucial aspect in getting a bowl is the extra practice. Now lets make sure that we take down dook and ncsu for the state title. I would also take a little swagger as well with my combo.
“UNC has two extra days to prepare for Duke.”?!?
“Welcome to the wackiness of the ACC” indeed.
The Miami game is completely winnable, because it’s at Chapel Hill (Miami is young and struggles to play well on the road) and we have a front seven that can generate pressure on Jacory Harris. Miami’s two losses both show that Harris shows his age and makes mistakes when he gets a heavy dose of pressure, and I’m confident that UNC can give him exactly that. As a matter of fact, I’m more worried about Duke than I am about Miami, because Cutcliffe’s offense has proven to be adept at slicing and dicing pass defenses, and our pass defense is really only average (and certainly not as good as our run D). Duke also spreads the field a lot and uses short passes that can neutralize the speed of our front seven. I can easily see us losing that game.
“Of course now last week’s loss sticks in the craw a bit”
Nice write up THF, but this statement is very much and understatement. The UVA game sticks in the craw a bit as well. It’s amazing how good the defense can be if they get just a few minutes break.
Among some things a I noticed:
* Getting some guys back on the OL. Yates had time to breath on more than once.
* Ryan Houston. Seems energized and as someone else pointed out, his success sets up Draughn
* Pianalto. Just a great safety valve. His absence clearly effects the Heels.
* Kevin Reddick to middle linebacker. This actually makes Quan more effective.
Great write up THF.
HP, you beat me to the punch on your points. The OL did look a lot better last night now that they are closer to being full strength again. Yates actually had time in the pocket late in the game and that certainly helped his accuracy a ton.
Ryan Houston is a load! Except for the couple of times when he tried to spin move and lost his forward momentum he played absolute smash mouth football.
As someone else said, you could see Yates get his confidence back in the late stages of the game. Part of that probably had as much to do with VT’s own version of bend don’t break that took some of the heat off Yates. The 3rd-7 and 4th-7 passes were dead on the money and done with authority. I thought they tried too hard to get the ball to Pianalto when he was covered up but it didn’t hurt us and he did have a couple of nice catches.
All in all, I was happy when the Heels came back and tied it at 17 all. That was all it took to show me how good we can be, even if we had lost the game. It was a great performance from our defense and the offense, other than the INT, looked very poised on a national stage against a ranked opponent. This is what I want to see from my team every week and last night’s game lived up to my expectations of this team. If they play like this the rest of the season then I will be happy and I expect we just might win another game or two.
PS. The coaches had a pretty good game too.
I agree with Santiago. I am not sure there is any discernible pattern to ACC football results this year whatsoever. A lot of these teams look great one week and simply awful the next. UNC probably should have beaten VPI last year so this helps make up for that devastating loss somewhat.
The UVa game seemed so horrible but inexplicably UVa doesn’t seem to be the same team that lost to the Tribe. Thus, UNC’s three losses are all pretty much quality losses, to GIT, UVa and FSU, to go together with two quality wins now, over UConn on the road and over VPI on the road. If they can beat Duke and State, I think it is a pretty successful year overall given the losses to graduation, the NFL and injuries.
By the way, didn’t the Duke game used to always be the last game of the season? Why would they change that tradition?
“By the way, didn’t the Duke game used to always be the last game of the season? Why would they change that tradition?”
Because it was perceived that the UNC-NCSU game had superseded UNC-Duke in terms of being the bigger rivalry in football. Duke has been so bad for so long and UNC-NCSU has been highly entertaining so they opted to put that on the traditional “rivalry weekend” along with all of the other schools. The irony is there is a potential for that two 5-3 teams will face off next week in Chapel Hill versus UNC possibly playing an NCSU team with a losing record at the end of the season.
Funny how that works.
The win certainly should help energize Kenan next week. State never really pressured Lewis, and he lit them up. I wonder how the Heels D will try to play them…..
Speaking of State and the last game. My educated guess is that we will be facing Russell Wilson in his farewell game at Carter Finley. If FSU beats them badly tomorrow, I could see State beating Maryland, but not Clemson, Va Tech. That would make them 4-7 goiing into the UNC game.
“Barth II” Exactly. I
thought about it with about two min left. Could we see another Halloween treat? I was at the Miami game where Connor hit a field goal to win and now Casey hits one to win. And what about Schallock’s hit on the guy after a punt in the first half!!
Ditto the comments about how enjoyable it was to see both sides of the ball play well.
I too agree with Santiago. For years I would have thought that having two extra days “to prepare for Dook” was as important as having two extra days to prepare to eat a cupcake. But, things being as they are this year, preparing for Dook actually IS important. That may be mortifying, but better mortification now than on game day.
P.S. Going for it on 4th and 7 was the best decision Butch has made this year. As one of the papers said, he is a machine that learns.
Lost in the shuffle is the fact that Va. Tech had 12 days to prepare for the Heels. Normally, that would put UNC at a disadvantage but I think the Hokies may have taken them a little too lightly. All in all, another reason why last night’s victory was so impressive — on the road against a top 15 coming off a bye week.
Heels Perspective, for some reason NCSU usually has a hard time agains Maryland. I know the Terps are awful this year, but it’s a strange year for the ACC.
“My educated guess is that we will be facing Russell Wilson in his farewell game at Carter Finley.”
Maybe I’m reading this wrong, but I don’t see any chance that Wilson leaves for the NFL after his redshirt sophomore season. There simply isn’t any demand in the NFL for 5’9″ quarterbacks, so he’ll probably stay to play QB for NC State until his eligibility expires. Of course, he could blow up on the baseball diamond and leave early for the MLB, but dude was a .236 hitter with 0 homers last year — he’s going to have to improve miraculously to get big league teams to draft him after this upcoming season.
Now that I’ve officially finished a day at work getting in the face of my Nebraska fan friends that told me “we couldn’t beat Tech, so UNC will lose by 50,” I want to actually say the coaches called pretty good game.
First, UNC will gadget you to death on offense, and they pretty much have to. The offensive set that puts Draughn out wide and bringing Little to the running back is extremely effective. You could tell that even when Little wasn’t running the ball, Tech looked confused as heck on defense. I’m hoping that Shoop can come up with some more plays to run out of this set to maximize it’s potential. Like the Dolphins do with the wildcat in the NFL, the gadgets go bad if you do the same things with it.
Seond, Greg Little proved something to me. He made some pretty impressive catches and ran the ball pretty well. I was under the assumption that opposing defenses weren’t wasting too much time on him because of the success Erik Highsmith had at the beginning of the year. Now that Little is back to being a threat who can beat you in more than one way, I’m hoping that defenses will key more on him and open up plays for Highsmith, Joshua Adams, Jehranie Boyd, and Zach Pianalto.
Third, this defense is extremely successful at pressuing the QB. Even my dad was shocked that Withers was dailing up blitzes in the 4th quarter, but Carter and Sturdivant proved they were more than able to keep Tyrod Taylor contained, and Redick is more than capable at being a dependable LB in the middle. I’d still like to see them mix up more formations and personnel on defense, but I thought Withers did a good job calling his game last night. Same with Shoop.
Finally, the OL did a good job in the second half protecting Yates, which was key to the offensive success. UNC also ran for 181 yards on Tech, which normally has a pretty stingy defense. I think if the OL can play as well as they played in the second half, Duke and NC State should be no issue, and Miami looks very beatable at this point.
great post and great points by the readers, what a great overall tone in this thread versus post GT and post UVA and post FSU. i don’t have any further analysis to redundantly add, but numbers stats and highlights aside, i just want to say how relieved and proud i am of the team. while frustrated as hell at our lack of production on O and inability to get key stops at times on D in our poor ACC start, the losses really just made me feel bad. The kids are working hard and no one was giving up on plays. Effort was there, but at times execution was not. Tonight both showed up, and they got a much deserved win. Way to go heels!
P.S. is it me or are VT fans that live in the triangle just obnoxious? don’t get me wrong i’m friends with them, close friends w/ a few even….but they let it be known their loyalty to VT moreso than nearly any other school. anyways, just wanted to throw that out there.