Canes defense aims to keep Heels grounded
The Hurricanes notched a rare shutout last week, led by Jaelan Phillips and Quincy Roche. They will face a tougher challenge from North Carolina.
In a 2019 season full of regrettable moments and blown chances in exceedingly winnable games, one moment still stands out for the Hurricanes because of how concisely it summed up their disastrous year. Fourth and 17.
“That play hurts,” striker Gilbert Frierson said Wednesday.
In the fourth quarter of its second game of the 2019 season, Miami was minutes from closing out North Carolina at Chapel Hill. The Hurricanes, leading by five, got sacks on second and third downs to force the Tar Heels into a fourth-and-17 situation with 2:55 remaining.
Miami’s pressure didn’t get to Sam Howell, and the star quarterback had time to dissect the defense. The Hurricanes’ coverage broke down and Howell, then just a freshman, found wide receiver Rontavius Groves open between two defensive backs for a 20-yard gain. North Carolina went on to score a touchdown with 1:01 left to keep Miami winless early in a season doomed to a sub-.500 record.
“That’s one that you’ll think about all year,” coach Manny Diaz said a few days later.
More than 15 months later, the No. 9 Hurricanes (No. 10 in CFP rankings) finally get their chance at revenge against the No. 20 Tar
Heels when they host North Carolina at Hard Rock Stadium on Saturday at 3:30 p.m. Miami’s defense will be tested once again by the Tar Heels and the prolific offense they have put together since hiring coach Mack Brown before last season.
This year, they rank fifth in total offense at 534.5 yards per game, fifth in yards per play at 7.5 and
12th in scoring offense at 41.1 points per game, led by two running backs with more than 900 yards, a quarterback with more than 3,100 yards and two wide receivers with more than 600 yards.
“It’s just another hate game,” tight end Brevin Jordan said Saturday.
HOW MIAMI’S DEFENSE STACKS UP
As good as the Hurricanes’ defense wound up in 2019 — it ranked top 25 in points allowed per game, yards allowed and yards per play — it never put together a complete performance like the one Miami (8-1, 7-1 Atlantic Coast) managed last Saturday against Duke Blue.
The 48-0 win at Durham, North Carolina, was the Hurricanes’ first shutout win against an
FBS opponent since 2006 and the first shutout of a conference foe since 2001. They gave up just 177 yards and forced five turnovers, and their two star defensive linemen combined for three sacks and 61⁄ tackles for loss.
On Monday, Quincy Roche’s reward was winning ACC Defensive Lineman of the Week and Jaelan Phillips’ was landing on the semifinalist list for the Chuck Bednarik Award, which is given to college football’s best defensive player.
Phillips is one of six Hurricanes to be named a semifinalist for major awards. Jordan is a semifinalist for the John Mackey Award, safety Bubba Bolden for the Jim Thorpe Award, kicker Jose Borregales for the Lou Groza Award, punter Lou
Hedley for the Ray Guy Award and quarterback D’Eriq King for both the Davey O’Brien Award and the Maxwell Award.
Offensive coordinator Rhett Lashlee is also a nominee for the Broyles Award as one of the nation’s best assistant coaches.
The elevated talent level sets up a heavyweight clash with the Tar Heels (7-3, 6-3) this weekend in Miami Gardens. King gives the Hurricanes a quarterback to match or best Howell, and their transfer-led defense has steadily improved throughout the season.
“It’s just taken, obviously, a little bit of time for us to really jell,” Phillips said Wednesday. “Everybody has individually improved on a week-toweek basis and, obviously, that just makes our whole defense better. ... It’s just all kind of coming together to make what we are right now.”
After the shutout at Wallace Wade Stadium, Miami is allowing 22.0 points per game, 366.2 yards and 5.1 yards per play. Those numbers are all worse than a year ago, but the Hurricanes have allowed just 19.6 points per game since their blowout loss to then-No. 1 Clemson in October. Miami is also forcing more turnovers than it was a year ago, and is still top 25 in sacks and top five in tackles for loss.
PHILLIPS, ROCHE STAR
Phillips and Roche are the foundation of everything these Hurricanes do.
Phillips, who transferred from UCLA and sat out the 2019 season, leads the Hurricanes with 71⁄ sacks
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and 14 tackles for loss. Roche, who transferred from Temple in January, also has 14 tackles for loss, plus four sacks.
Together, they’re emulating the production of former defensive end Gregory Rousseau, who had 151⁄ sacks and 191⁄
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tackles for loss last year, then opted out of the 2020 season for COVID-19 concerns.
The progression started in the offseason, even as spring practices and summer workouts vanished because of the coronavirus pandemic.
Large team workouts were replaced by smaller, position-specific sessions, which forced Phillips and Roche to step up as leaders, even though they had never played a game for the Hurricanes.
“When you go through the trenches together it just makes you that much stronger,” Phillips said, “That was kind of essential in just making us closer and I think that we wouldn’t be able to be as good as we are, or have the record that we have today, if it wasn’t for all that.”
WHAT’S AT STAKE
Defensive line play will be even more important than usual this week as Miami tries to manage a shorthanded secondary after cornerback Al Blades Jr. was diagnosed with myocarditis, ending his season.
If they can slow down North Carolina, the Hurricanes could lock up third place in the ACC and move a step closer toward making a New Year’s Six bowl.
“This has every feel of that late-season, big-event game in Miami,” Diaz said. “This is a top-20 matchup going on late in the season, so this is a big-time game for our league.”