By Frank Heath
Sports Columnist
Watching this evolving young UNC football team week by week reminds me slightly of a scene from Charlie And The Chocolate Factory, where Mike Teavee decides he is going to transport himself over the television airwaves to the (slight) protestations of Mr. Wonka.
Each time Carolina’s red-shirt freshman quarterback T. J. Yates drops back and fires a pass, one can almost sense the million tiny particles of this team’s identity traveling through the air over the field. In the same way that the moviegoer fixed his or her gaze on the television screen waiting to see if Mike Teavee would arrive in one piece, you glance instinctively downfield to see which of Carolina’s three bounteously talented wide receivers may be curling off of his route to intersect with the ball’s trajectory. More often than not — at least as concerns the UNC passing game — the result thus far in 2007 has been a complete and full-sized version of young Mr. Teavee hopping off of the television screen.
This early trend of competence at quarterback and aerial success has to be a huge relief for observers who had been concerned that this year’s team might not be able to sustain any sort of functional offense. Butch Davis’s coaching staff has to be handed a lot of credit for organizing and teaching the offense in such a way that it makes sense to all and can click so effortlessly once Yates and his wideouts find their rhythm.
Of course, along with the daring endeavor of starting a football team practically from scratch — like choosing to teleport one’s self — can also come some unanticipated and un-hoped-for results. In much the same way that Mike Teavee wound up being four inches tall once his molecules reassembled across the Chocolate Factory room, the Carolina defense has, to this point, shown up small too.
Opposing offenses in UNC’s first three games have experienced a variety of successes against the Tar Heel defenders — from being able to run the ball consistently well and thus dominate the time of possession battle, to long kick returns and pass plays that hinged on missed defensive assignments by Carolina, to winning the turnover battle.
Looking at this as a glass half full, it appears as though Davis is assembling a group of players with the skills to play competitive and perhaps dominant football but not yet perhaps the full knowledge or experience. Especially among the front seven, there are some players out there in the baby blue that ooze with potential.
And defenses can often transform themselves over the course of a season, so it will be interesting to see what this unit is looking like in a month or so. Perhaps Davis’s Oompa Loompas can take the Tar Heels back into a special room in the football compound and stretch them into a close-to-full-sized team.
So, where are we now? With a stretch coming up of four consecutive games against Top 25-caliber opposition (at South Florida this weekend, followed by Virginia Tech, Miami and South Carolina), Carolina has probably blown its chance at any kind of post-season appearance by losing back-to-back close outcomes against Virginia and ECU. But 1-2 is probably an accurate reflection of this team’s current abilities. It would have been exciting for the Tar Heels to still be undefeated at this stage of the season with a reasonable chance of squeaking into something like the Tire Bowl, but too-much-too-soon sometimes comes with its own set of problems. The “Butch For President†and “Hakeem For Heisman†bumper stickers may be better put off until next season, anyway.