The play-by-play section of a box score is a familiar sight for any seasoned football fan. Before Matt Welsh and I road-tripped to Chapel Hill for our first Virginia away game, we decided to record our own play-by-play of the events prior to kickoff. Spoiler alert: we missed said kickoff. The timeline went something like this:
10:30 a.m. - I do the math on our road trip and decide I have enough time for brunch with friends.
11:30 - After waiting an hour for pancakes, I realize I botched the math. We should have left an hour ago.
11:50 - I frantically run home because I forgot my press credentials. My roommate sees me and asks, "What are you still doing here?" It's a fair question.
11:52 - Matt frantically runs home because he forgot his phone.
12 p.m. - Finally on the road, Matt drives because he'll "get us there faster." My only job is to stare at the GPS and alert us when we need to make a turn.
1 - We miss a turn.
2:30 - Matt and I pound leftover pancakes, sans forks, from a to-go box.
3:20 - We ask a parking attendant where the media lot is. He says, "straight ahead," then adds that he "doesn't actually know." He didn't know - it was in the opposite direction.
3:45 - We finally find our seats in the press box, just in time to watch kicker Robert Randolph snap his previously perfect field goal streak and miss a 42-yarder wide right.
It wasn't going to be Virginia's day either.
Compared to our debacle, the Cavaliers' play-by-play section actually reads relatively smoothly. Virginia owned advantages in time of possession, total offensive yards and first downs, matching or surpassing the Tar Heels in virtually every relevant statistic except the one which mattered most - points scored.
Randolph's missed field goal epitomized the Virginia offense Saturday. The team repeatedly marched down the field with apparent ease only to stall near the goal line.
Quarterback Michael Rocco showed signs of growth against the Tar Heels, as he more comfortably stretched the field with longer throws and appeared more poised in the pocket. He tossed his first touchdown of the season on a 41-yard screen pass to fullback Max Milien and later scrambled away from North Carolina pressure and into the end zone for a four-yard touchdown run.
Virginia's tailbacks also held steady against North Carolina's heralded defensive line. The Tar Heels entered the matchup having only allowed 30 rushing yards per game, but the Cavaliers pushed back that powerful front for 170 yards. Such an effective ground game allowed Virginia to dominate time of possession, and the team held the ball for 15 of the game's first 20 minutes.
The Cavaliers consistently orchestrated long drives but also consistently failed to finish them. During the second quarter alone, Virginia twice infiltrated North Carolina territory, but twice failed to advance farther. David Watford hurried a pass over wideout Dominique Terrell's head on fourth-and-three at the Heels' 36-yard line, and on the subsequent possession, Rocco fumbled the ball at the North Carolina 38-yard line.
"It was little things here and there where we should have connected on the pass, we should have had a hole open up more quickly and we should have scored more points," Rocco said. "We would have been in a position to have a lead going into the half instead of trailing."
Conversely, through the game's first three quarters, the Tar Heels operated the field with almost robotic ease by visiting the red zone four times and converting each opportunity. North Carolina did the little things Virginia did not, scoring once as Tar Heel tailback Ryan Houston leapt forward, barely extending the ball against the pylon, and scoring again as wide receiver Dwight Jones' foot just landed inside the white lines. When a hoodie-wearing North Carolina girl calmly drilled a 32-yard field goal at halftime to win free Arby's chicken wraps for everyone else in attendance, it seemed the hosts could do no wrong. And by the time Bryn Renner finally showed some sign of human imperfection by fumbling at the 5-yard line early in the fourth quarter, the Cavaliers were buried in an inescapable hole.
Max Milien said after the game that "it's the little things that matter most," and he's right. Small mistakes add up - whether it's a missed turn or a missed field goal, metaphorically dropping the ball on road trip ETAs or literally dropping the ball on the 38-yard line. Sometimes mistakes leave you 30 miles out of Chapel Hill with 25 minutes until kickoff. Sometimes mistakes leave you 11 points out of a game with three minutes until time expires. Either way, the little things often snowball uncontrollably until they are too big to overcome.
Winning on the road is hard. After failing so epically on our road trip debut, Matt and I will attest to that. After failing to win a single road game last year, Mike London would probably attest to that as well. During my first foray into football coverage on the road, I didn't get a win - and I'm still waiting on that free chicken wrap. But that's what happens when the play-by-play is a laundry list of mistakes and missed opportunities. It leaves players and columnists searching for the storyline of what went wrong, but sometimes the only thing to go wrong is the final score.
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