Art's Angle: 'Throw-Up' Time

Mack Brown is prepared to turn the page after swallowing his worst loss as North Carolina’s football coach since he started taking the Tar Heels to bowl games every year in the early 1990s.

“We’re not ready to be the team I thought we’d be,” he said after another bad trip to Atlanta, where UNC now has a 9-20-1 record on the road at Georgia Tech.

The Yellow Jackets were more physical, much faster and better prepared to play the No. 21 team in the nation, a ranking that will certainly be gone when the next polls come out Sunday following Carolina’s surprising 45-22 defeat.

Actually, it was quite stunning how Georgia Tech apparently fed off its narrow loss at Clemson last week. That showed once head coach Geoff Collins pulled his starting QB Jordan Yates, nephew of former UNC star T.J. Yates, who owned several passing records from his years playing for Butch Davis until Sam Howell broke them all.

Lanky Jeff Sims came in and played football like the spectacular athlete he has been billed, unstoppable off the read option and showing a throwing touch that had been seen in practice but never before in games. Sims was the difference maker and easily the best quarterback on the field at Mercedes-Benz Stadium.

The Tar Heels scored less than five minutes into the game after Giovanni Biggers blocked a punt and Howell pulled off a spectacular, spinning touchdown run of 23 yards, shredding at least three tacklers on the way. The next time they scored was 35 minutes later, deep into the third quarter, to cut Tech’s lead to 13 points after the Wramblin’ Wreck scored 27 unaswered.

Ten of those Jackets points came on two fumbles by Howell, who ran so much early that it looked like his legs were as much a part of the game plan as his arm. But he was facing an aggressive, gang-tackling defense that sacked him eight times and hit him harder than he has been in his college career.

While the hosts dressed in menacing navy led 13-7 at the half, it seemed like an anomaly since Tech’s first touchdown came on a fluke fumble that was ripped from Howell’s hands as he was going down and returned to the Carolina red zone. Sims hid the ball deftly on an option and ran untouched across the goal line.

In the second half, Sims reminded Brown of his former Texas All-American Vince Young, running for 117 yards and two more TDs and throwing for 112 yards and another score. He added insult to the injured UNC defense when he sprinted 50 yards untouched to cap the scoring and proving that Jay Bateman and his defense never really knew what hit them. By that time, they should have had one defender “spying” on Sims to go wherever he went, but did not appear to.

“We thought Yates was going to be the guy, but we didn’t prepare really for Sims or dual QBs,” said linebacker Jeremiah Gemmel after the two-touchdown underdog Jackets won their first game against a ranked opponent in three years.

It is safe to say that while T.J.’s nephew looks like a nice player, he may never see the field again in the heat of battle with Sims finally converting his immense talent into a dangerous RPO quarterback who had almost as many total yards in one half as Howell had all night and earned twice the QB rating.

The game and outcome capped another crazy day in the ACC, when N.C. State snapped a long losing streak against offensively anemic Clemson and instantly became the Atlantic Division favorite to reach the ACC championship game, which the 2-2 Tar Heels must now cross off their to-do list.

While capable of beating the eight teams left on their schedule, they also must be wary of any opponent, beginning with Duke Saturday at high noon in Kenan Stadium. The Blue Devils will certainly come to Chapel Hill with renewed confidence by seeing what happened to their blue blood rival following their third straight non-conference victory over a decidedly soft schedule.

Duke may not have the speed of Sims and Georgia Tech’s tough tailback Jahmyr Gibbs, but the Devils look plenty fast and senior quarterback Gunnar Holmberg has come out of nowhere to be a proficient passer and runner. The game marks the first of three straight at home, with 0-4 Florida State and 2-2 Miami to follow.

Perhaps the coolest moment of the night while Carolina still had a fighting chance was after Howell hit Josh Downs for a short touchdown. No. 92 without a name came out to line up as a tackle-eligible receiver and caught the two-point conversion pass all alone in the left side of the endzone. No one seemed to know who he was until he ran to the sideline and stripped off his jersey to reveal his real name and number – 6-5, 305-pound offensive tackle Cayden Baker (57).

There were still 11-plus minutes left in the game, but the last bad omen followed when Jonathan Kim pulled his first kickoff out of bounds this season to set up the Jackets at their own 35 and their eventual field goal that made any rally unlikely.

Brown allowed that his defense, which pretty much shut down Virginia in the second half last week, did not feed off that performance and his offense that had almost 600 total yards against UVa “didn’t show up.”

“I hate it for our fans and hate it for our kids,” Brown told Jones Angell on WCHL after the game. “Honestly, it makes you want to throw up.”

Photo via AP Photo/John Bazemore.