College football has been played in the United States for more than 150 years. And in that century-and-a-half of action, there has surely never been a game quite like what the Tar Heels and Mountaineers did on Saturday.
Carolina and App State combined for 62 points in the fourth quarter in a shootout for the ages, and the Tar Heels fought off rally after rally to escape Boone with a 63-61 win. It’s the highest-scoring game of head coach Mack Brown’s tenure in Chapel Hill.
You may never see anything like it again. Go Tar Heels!#CarolinaFootball 🏈 @WellsFargo pic.twitter.com/IG6guNhs3E
— Carolina Football (@UNCFootball) September 3, 2022
“That was two great offenses today,” a red-faced Mack Brown said after the game. “Two tremendous quarterbacks… [they] just kept coming back and back and back.”
The fourth-quarter bonanza completely overshadowed the rest of the game, but it was worth writing home about in its own right. The Mountaineers opened up a 21-7 lead early in the second quarter and were threatening to run away with the game. The Tar Heels then scored 34 unanswered points, helmed by a once-again sharp Drake Maye at quarterback. Maye engineered a 72-yard scoring drive in 1:43 at the end of the second quarter, capping it with one of his four touchdown passes. Carolina had deferred possession to the second half, and used their opening drive of the third quarter to score yet another touchdown. Just like that, it was 35-21 Tar Heels.
“The one-minute drill right before the half was the way you draw it up,” Brown said. “It was perfect.”
UNC threatened to put the game out of reach by tacking on two additional field goals in the third quarter, the second coming after a Cedric Gray interception of App State quarterback Chase Brice. As the fourth quarter began, UNC led 41-21 and Mountaineer fans were beginning to trickle out of Kidd Brewer Stadium.
“The game’s never over until it’s over, as you can see,” Gray said. “That’s something I always say, as a leader, to my guys: four quarters of football. Gotta play four quarters of football.”
Then… the fourth quarter began.
Now, bear with a humble sportswriter here. I’ll try to summarize the furious action, but it may be above my poor power to add or detract.
App State scored a touchdown early in the period, bringing the deficit down to 41-28. On the Carolina offense’s first play of the ensuing drive, Maye was stripped of the ball while running, and the Mountaineers recovered. Less than two minutes after their first touchdown, they reached the end zone again. A 20-point lead was down to six in the blink of an eye.
Carolina’s first play on the next drive traded in the catastrophic for the explosive: Caleb Hood took a handoff from Maye and ran it 71 yards inside the Mountaineer 5-yard line. As quickly as App State pushed their way back into the game, the Tar Heels pushed the lead back to 14 points (Maye ran in a two-point conversion to make the score 49-35).
UNC’s defense, which had held App State to just seven points across the second and third quarters, reverted back to its first quarter form. Brice unleashed a dime to receiver Christian Horn on the Mountaineers’ next drive, a 46-yard touchdown. 49-42. Instead of answering with another touchdown on its next drive, UNC punted. App’s hot offense promptly scored in just 46 seconds. 49-49.
App State had outscored UNC 28-8 in the fourth quarter to that point. But just you wait. We’re not done yet.
UNC faced a 3rd-and-9 just inside Mountaineer territory on the ensuing possession. App State called an all-out blitz, hoping to catch the redshirt freshman Maye flat-footed. Instead, Maye threw off his back foot, took a hit from approximately a dozen Mountaineers, and floated the football into the arms of running back D.J. Jones. Jones had leaked out of the backfield unmarked during the blitz, and took the pass 42 yards into the end zone. UNC was back in front, and looked to have stuck a dagger into App’s chances.
“What a play,” Brown said of the sequence. “He’s got a free man, he knows he’s gonna get hit right in the chest, but he kept his poise.”
“They were bringing the house,” Maye said. “I guess, trying to catch a young quarterback. But they forgot about D.J.!”
App’s next possession appeared to be played in slow motion. Twice, Carolina appeared to be in the driver’s seat, and each time it was negated by a penalty. On the first, Brice scrambled on 3rd-and-long and was brought down well short of the sticks, setting up a 4th-and-long. But the Tar Heels were flagged for a late hit on the sliding Brice.
The second time, Brice was hit as he was throwing on a desperation pass on fourth down. But a holding penalty on the incomplete pass kept the drive alive. You know the rest: App State scored a touchdown two plays later. But instead of kicking a game-tying extra point, Mountaineer head coach Shawn Clark elected to go for a go-ahead two-point conversion. The play call worked: Brice had a wide-open receiver in the flat.
And here’s where UNC got lucky: the pass was overthrown ever so slightly, falling to the turf. UNC would survive, 56-55.
But… always that word, ‘but.’
On App’s ensuing onside kick, Bryson Nesbit recovered the ball and ran it in for a touchdown. A highlight at perhaps any other moment, but not this one. Nesbit’s score unintentionally gave the ball back to the Mountaineers with 28 seconds left, still down by just one possession at 63-55.
With no timeouts remaining, surely App couldn’t drive the length of the field? Well, they didn’t have to. A personal foul penalty on UNC moved the kickoff back 15 yards. Jonathan Kim could not boot the ball for a touchback, and App returned the kick all the way to midfield. Brice needed just two plays to drive 48 yards, and App was back within two points: 63-61.
The Mountaineers again would go for two; not for the lead this time, but for the tie. Even despite all the catastrophic plays it had allowed in the fourth quarter, even despite giving up 40 points in 15 minutes, even despite scoring a touchdown when that was somehow the wrong choice… Carolina could win the game with one play.
Brice called his own number around the right side. But instead of running into the end zone, he ran into a hoard of white jerseys. The gallant App State quarterback, and the mind-numbingly insane Mountaineer rally, fell just inches short of glory.
“At the end, I said, ‘Dude, there’s gonna be a time when we’re gonna have to get a stop,'” Gray said. “And we did… we got that stop.”
“I took a knee at the opposite end of the sideline, where I watched the first two-point play,” Maye said. “And that next one, I went down there and did the same thing, because I figured, good-luck spot. And it ended up working.”
Somehow, some way, Carolina made a great escape out of Boone with a 2-0 record. It does so having won its first game away from Kenan Stadium since December 2020, and also while averaging 59.5 points scored per game and 42.5 points allowed in 2022. But don’t try to bring Brown down after this one. He won’t have any of it.
“If you win, you take a win and go,” Brown said. “We were underdogs and hadn’t won a road game all last year. Anybody that thinks I’m gonna be mad or disappointed after this one doesn’t understand coaching.”
Featured image via UNC Athletic Communications/Andy Mead
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