Oct. 3, 2003

by Lee Pace, Extra Points

Questions and comments have been streaming in all season with various opinions on why the Tar Heels have struggled on defense. Some fans think the defensive scheme is too simple--that the Heels should blitz and disguise and stunt more. Others think it's too complicated--that Carolina should make things easy from an X-and-O standpoint and play its young players more.

John Bunting himself weighed in on the issue this week at his Tuesday meeting with the news media. He thinks the Heels erred on the aggressive side last week at N.C. State.

"We're going to simplify things a little," Bunting said. "We did not play fast, we did not play with the energy you'd like to have. That might have been because we overloaded them. That's on us as coaches. We were trying to match N.C. State's speed. They do a lot of shifting and motion, and we were trying to get in the perfect defense for every snap. We called a lot of audibles at the line of scrimmage. Maybe we tried to do too much."

Bunting also fielded head-on a question from a reporter wondering why this year's defense hasn't shown improvement over last year's, particularly when assumptions were that this unit would be older and deeper than last year's.

"That's a question I've asked myself," Bunting said.

"One, I think the quality of our opposition has been pretty good. The four teams we've played are a combined 15-4--our schedule is ranked hardest in the country. That's had something to do with it.

"I'm not sure we're necessarily deeper. Yes, we're playing more players. We're trying to give a lot of kids an opportunity to help us win. The continuity factor is not what you'd like to have. We played 22 players on defense against Wisconsin and 24 against State. That's too many. There will come a point here when we're using 15 or 16.

"We improved against Syracuse. We improved against Wisconsin. We took a step back against N.C. State."

This week the Tar Heel staff moved freshman Larry Edwards to first-team weak-side linebacker and junior Devllen Bullard to starting middle linebacker. Another freshman, Melik Brown, will start at strong-side linebacker. Freshman Fred Sparkman was the second-team MLB.

You've made a comparison of this year's team to the first Mack Brown team of 1988 and it is very comparable. However, I was curious to know many seniors, juniors, etc., Brown had on defense in 1988? Also, I wanted to know how many of the current defensive starters were recruited by the Bunting staff.
Jay Hill, Greensboro

Carolina started one senior on defense in 1988--outside linebacker Antonio Goss. And he was a good one, going on to play eight years in the NFL. (Goss today, by the way, is on the staff at Buffalo University under head coach Jim Hofher, the quarterbacks coach at Carolina in 1998-99.) Alongside Goss to open the season were six juniors, two sophomores and two freshmen. As a group they were very slow.

Carolina yielded 463 yards a game that year.

Several of those juniors did not return the following season as Brown told them they did not fit into his plans for 1989. By then he had one full recruiting class under his belt and had begun working the true freshmen into the starting lineup, depending on how various other players performed from week-to-week and who was healthy. Tommy Thigpen started six games at linebacker, safety Cookie Massey two at strong safety, Dell Jones six at free safety, and Cliff Baskerville two at cornerback. That defense improved to 413 yards a game allowed.

By 1992 and 1993, the Tar Heels were playing with veteran defenses that would send 11 juniors and seniors to the NFL (Bernardo Harris, Austin Robbins, Thomas Smith, Bracey Walker, Riddick Parker, Troy Barnett, Ray Jacobs, Jimmy Hitchcock, Mike Morton, Eddie Mason and the aforementioned Jones among them). Those 1992 and 1993 units averaged allowed 325 yards a game.

I don't think it serves any purpose to break the current roster down into who was recruited by which head coach. The only question that matters is this: Can the current staff recruit enough players to be competitive in the ACC? Next week's Extra Points newsletter will include a piece on the three freshmen wide receivers--Mike Mason, Jesse Holley and Adarius Bowman. These kids are talented, athletic and confident. Each of them could have gone to any school in the nation. They're showing up on the radar screen sooner than other members of the 2003 signing class because wide receiver is probably the easiest position for a freshman to play. In them, I believe, you have a microcosm of what Bunting and staff can do at Carolina.

I'm tired of hearing that Carolina is a basketball school and just can't get the athletes to play football like Maryland, N.C. State, and whoever else is in the middle of the pack right now in the conference. It wasn't too long ago that Carolina recruited with the best of them under Mack Brown. How in the heck can a significant drop off like this have happened in so short a time? I can deal with Florida State getting more athletes because frankly I like character as well, but Maryland, N.C. State, Virginia and possibly Georgia Tech? Was the loss of (defensive coordinator Jon) Tenuta, A.J. Nicholson, A.J. Davis, and other recruits that dramatic? I see a lack of speed and execution as the difference in at least the Syracuse and possibly the Wisconsin game and that would translate into 2-2 and in position for at least 6-6 in rebuilding year. And that, my friend, is extremely frustrating knowing the offense has played much better this year than last.
Gary Meyer, Columbia, S.C.

Key words here--"in short a time." It actually has not happened in a short period. As I wrote in this week's Extra Points newsletter, the denigration of the Carolina program has been a slow, almost imperceptible process, not unlike a battleship trying to turn around. Regular readers of Extra Points dating back to 1998 know that I have carefully chronicled the recruiting mistakes made in the mid-1990s where offensive linemen, quarterbacks and tailbacks were concerned. The decisions at the time might have been slam-dunk proper, but for any number of reasons, the players never evolved into forces that could keep the Tar Heels in the Top 10. Then in the late-1990s, a number of decisions on defensive players turned out sour--go back and look at the signing lists and see how many players are no longer around (I've done more than once in Extra Points, if you want to check the archives). There again, maybe you make some of those decisions all over again. Recruiting is an inexact science and many times a player you think will contribute never does.

This has been a gradual process and it all goes back to recruiting.

Bill Dooley recruited his way out of a talent hole in the late-1960s and did so again in the mid-1970s following negative fall-out from the death of Bill Arnold.

Mack Brown recruited his way out of a talent hole in the late-1980s.

And Bunting is trying to do that very thing right now.

Two questions about rules and procedures. First, when there is a penalty call in college football, why do we not announce the number of the player making the infraction-as they do in the NFL-or as we do in basketball? Second, wouldn't the two-minute warning at the end of the second and fourth quarters add another strategy dimension to collegiate football? And the potential of additional advertising dollars wouldn't hurt the university, either. It might be possible to identify the revenue from those specific, additional commercials and direct it specifically to those sports which generate little or no revenue. Right now they're subsidized by football and basketball, right?
Dick Forde, Gastonia

Interesting thoughts but I don't think either would ever happen.

The reason that players are identified for personal fouls in basketball is that records must be kept of who commits fouls as the accumulation of fouls can get a player disqualified. Fouls are a big part of the game. But in football, an offensive lineman can hold all day long--his team will get a bunch of 15-yard penalties but the rules don't require him to leave the game on his fifth holding foul.

There was actually a fair amount of controversy years ago when the NFL started identifying those players committing fouls. Some believed that individuals shouldn't be singled out. Others argued--and won--that these players are professionals and are earning big bucks and if they make a mistake, it should be announced. Given that college players are still kids, identifying them to a stadium full of fans probably serves no purpose. They'll pay the piper in the film room the next day anyway.

The two-minute warning was created years ago when the official game time was kept on the field. Sometimes there would be a discrepancy between the official time and the time on the stadium clock. So the two-minute warning was created to tell each head coach exactly when two minutes remained. In later years it served no purpose other than to allow TV to run additional commercials. Personally, I loathe the way the passing game and TV have stretched out the time it takes to play a college football game. Saturday's game at N.C. State was almost four hours. A two-minute warning in college would only stretch it out more.

Looking ahead to next season, who do the Tar Heels have for the positions of place-kicker, punter and kick-offs? Looking at the depth chart, all three of these positions--and the holder--are filled by seniors. There is only one freshman kicker on the roster and he is only listed at punter.
Phillip Strickland, Raleigh

Good question and obviously a concern for the Tar Heel coaching staff. David Wooldridge is the one scholarship kicker with eligibility remaining. Wooldridge, a red-shirt freshman, came to Carolina with well-rounded abilities--he potentially could punt, place-kick and/or kick-off. But few kickers can handle all three, so the coaching staff is hoping he can concentrate on punting.

The Tar Heels have a commitment from a kicker (but as this is an official university website, his name cannot be used until he signs a letter-of-intent in February). They also will look for and encourage contributions from walk-ons.

It is difficult for most of us to recognize the sophisticated defenses that colleges use. Man coverage is obvious and zone (which I don't like) is pretty evident when receivers get wide open "in the seams." Two defenses that I don't think I have seen the Heels use this year are double coverage and a combination man/zone. Are either being used?
Bill Pittman, Raleigh

Carolina does in fact have "combination" coverages in its defensive playbook and has used them quite often this year. But you are right--it's hard to recognize them. Basketball teams play defense for 10 to 30 seconds at a time, so it's much easier to recognize zone, man, match-up, box-and-1, etc. But football plays last only a couple of seconds and receivers dart through coverage areas, making it difficult to pick up on assignments.

Combination coverages can take many forms, and one of the most frequently used is a "half-zone"--one side of the secondary plays zone and the other side plays man. Those could be defined by the field side (wide side of the field) playing zone and the boundary side (tight side) playing man. Sometimes underneath coverage will be man and deep coverage zone. Or the strongside (where the tight end is aligned) could be man and the weakside zone.

Combination coverages can also be used to target specific receivers, which addresses your double-coverage question. Wisconsin, for example, had a premier receiver in Lee Evans. At times a cornerback was assigned to cover Evans man-to-man with the responsibility to try to force him toward the middle of the field, where he would be picked up by one of the safeties playing a two-deep zone. That's exactly what happened in the second quarter when Derrick Johnson covered Evans man-to-man, with safety Mahlon Carey rolling over as Evans ran a post-pattern. Carey bracketed Evans from the inside, Johnson locked on the outside. Then Carey used his athleticism to leap and make an interception.

TarHeelBlue.com football expert Lee Pace will again answer your questions about the Carolina program this season in an exclusive column published each Friday. Pace, editor of the Extra Points newsletter that appears each Monday morning, will answer your questions on personnel, strategy, opponents and anything on your mind about the Tar Heels. Please send your questions to Lee at lpace@nc.rr.com, and include your first and last names and your hometown.