Following the opening kickoff, my North Carolina friend turned to me and made an outrageous prediction.
"T.J. Yates - 80-yard touchdown pass - right here," he quipped.
He was wrong. It was an 81-yard touchdown pass.
The rest of the evening was no less bizarre. North Carolina accomplished the seemingly impossible, winning a football game in Scott Stadium for the first time since Ronald Reagan was in the Oval Office. Many members of the Wahoo faithful expressed doubts heading into Saturday's game, but virtually no one predicted anything other than a tightly contested affair. Yet Carolina finished with its largest margin of victory against any opponent with coach Butch Davis. In fact, the Heels' 34-point edge marked their most emphatic win against Virginia since a 42-0 shutout in 1958.
Even the way the Heels went about tarring the Cavaliers was surprising. Rather than expose a Virginia rush defense that ranked last in the conference, Carolina decided to dismantle a pass defense that had given up the 10th fewest yards in the country through the first six weeks of the season. The absence of Ras-I Dowling - a late scratch because of a nagging knee injury - did not help the cause of the Virginia secondary, which surrendered more than 300 passing yards for the first time this season.
The unheralded pilot of the Heels' aerial onslaught caused even more head scratching. Senior quarterback T.J. Yates - who could barely complete a pass in warm-ups last year against the Cavaliers - connected on 17-of-22 pass attempts for 325 yards, three touchdowns and no interceptions. The sky darkened as all the pent-up fury of a player who had never tasted victory against an arch rival was unleashed upon the hapless Cavaliers all night long. Suddenly the kid who threw more interceptions than touchdowns last year looked like a Heisman candidate, as his 11 touchdowns and one interception highlight a potentially stellar season.
I'm guessing no one saw Dwight Jones' sublime performance coming either. The junior Carolina wideout entered the game with a pedestrian 125 career reception yards. By the end of the third quarter, his stat line against Virginia read an astonishing 198 yards and two touchdowns.
Perhaps most jarring of all, though, was what Virginia brought to the table. Before a homecoming crowd anxious to witness the typically hard-fought battle of the South's oldest rivalry, the Cavaliers put forth yet another shameful performance. The same old problems - including a poor start, bad tackling and failures on third down - re-emerged, and a bundle of new problems cropped up, including red-zone turnovers and mistakes in the secondary.
I'm beginning to wonder if this team relishes the challenge of playing from behind because every week they seem to come out of the gates with the speed of an injured platypus. After falling victim to early deficits against Florida State and Georgia Tech, the Cavaliers had to be focused on getting off to a good start against Carolina. Allowing a short slant route to turn into an 81-yard touchdown does not fall under that good start category. This team is being outscored 67-17 in the first half of ACC games this season. When your team already lacks talent, the prospect of climbing out of holes against good teams can be almost impossible, so these guys need to figure out how to light a spark at the outset of games.
Apart from the embarrassing score, the worst thing that came out of this game might have been the play of Marc Verica, whose three costly interceptions prompted the coaching staff to push the quarterback carousel button. The Cavaliers are now embroiled in quarterback controversy, as Mike London will continue to face questions about his starting quarterback. Going into Saturday's game, Verica's quarterback rating against FBS opponents already placed him outside the top 100. He had a chance to turn that around before the comforts of a home crowd but failed miserably in that regard.
Now the question begs - should London pull Verica for the rest of the year in favor of a freshman quarterback? Neither backup encouraged their coach to make that decision Saturday, as Ross Metheny's only pass attempt was intercepted and Michael Rocco also threw a pick. Nevertheless, Verica has been handed plenty of opportunities by the coaching staff this season, and his inability to take advantage of them means he deserves to be benched. Let Metheny gain some confidence this weekend against an Eastern Michigan team that is giving up 43 points a game this year. After Saturday's debacle, it seems he couldn't do any worse than Verica anyway.
It's difficult for these Virginia football players to hold their heads high when their home stadium rocks to the chants of "Tar! Heels!" during the fourth quarter. It's also tough to swallow the fact that it's been more than a year since they have won an ACC game. Or that they have lost to 10 consecutive FBS teams.
But these Cavaliers cannot just lie down the rest of the way, even with the cruel specter of loss and failure that will haunt them for the rest of the year. They can forget about a bowl game. The prospect of the postseason has been all but completely shattered. But they must dig deep and fight for more important things - for their school, for their families, for their own pride.
Maybe Mike London said it best after the game: "When bad things happen, that happens. It's how you respond to those things that matters. We need to respond better. Adversity is going to happen in a lot of things. It happens in life. It's how you respond to those things that makes a difference"
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