By Frank Heath
Columnist
Once upon a time, the North Carolina football team was known around the world for its running game.
Year in and out, if the Tar Heels could depend upon doing one thing very well, it was rushing the football. During the 1970s and 1980s, and for parts of the ’90s, no school ran better or more consistently.
A series of backs that included guys like Don McCauley, Mike Voight, Amos Lawrence, Kelvin Bryant and Ethan Horton — and that’s only to name a few — donned the light blue as freshmen or sophomores and burned brightly across the Kenan Stadium stage to the tune of 100-and-200-plus-yard games and 1,000-yard seasons. Three or four years — and 3,000-plus rushing yards — down the road, they would pass the baton, or in this case the football, to an heir apparent who was poised to do the same.
Gosh, in those days even the UNC fullbacks were often pretty good at running the ball. Guys like Bob Loomis, Billy Johnson and Doug Paschal — whose main job on the field was to help clear a path for Carolina’s dynamic tailbacks — could give opponents fits once they actually had the pigskin under their own arms.
During a 12-year run from 1972-until-1984, UNC had at least one, and sometimes two, 1,000-yard rushers in each season. During that stretch, eight, nine, ten and eleven-win seasons were more the rule than the exception, and the Tar Heels claimed the ACC regular season title on several occasions.
But for fans of a consistent running game here at North Carolina, those have long looked like the good old days. For many years now, the wheels have been gone from the UNC rushing attack; Carolina has not had a running back gain 1,000 yards for a season since Jonathan Linton did it in the late-90s, and really nobody has been close to rushing that well for an entire year. This decade, the quarterbacks, Ronald Curry and Darian Durant, have been the Tar Heels’ most effective rushers.
UNC’s ground production has actually been on a steady decline since the mid-1980s. In 1984 Ethan Horton racked up 1,247 yards in the last of those 12 consecutive years in which North Carolina had at least one running back who gained 1,000 yards.
Since that high point, Carolina has periodically had a good year on the ground from the likes of Derrick Fenner, Natrone Means or Leon Johnson, but there has never been the year-to-year consistency in the running game that was pretty much a given from 1969 until 1984.
The statistics reveal an almost wilting pattern: rushing yards per game dipped from an average of 241 during the 1970s to a still-robust 216 in the ‘80s to 171 during the ’90s to barely 130 yards on average during the seasons since 2000.
Obviously, having a powerful offensive line that understands run blocking is paramount to any chance at success on the ground. Between 1969 and 1985, when Carolina produced a steady stream of All-ACC and All-American linemen, guys like Ron Rusnak, Ken Huff, Ron Wooten and Brian Blados walked onto campus and anchored their side of the line for three or four seasons.
That once-steady stream of dominant tackles, guards and centers has since diminished to a trickle, and Carolina’s rushing production has dwindled along with it.
In the quest for “offensive balance†that began (and flourished) under Mack Brown, UNC football misplaced what was once its identity — and its formula for winning — somewhere along the way. The result has been a consistent stated wish that Carolina would run well, but not the attendant will necessary to make that hope a reality.
One of my hopes for the Butch Davis era of North Carolina football is that with all of these talented players Coach Davis and his staff will seemingly be able to attract, the Tar Heels will come back around to that formula for rushing dominance — and consistent winning — that gave Carolina the nickname “Tailback U†way back when.
So I say bring back the massive offensive linemen, those shifty durable backs and the 1000-yard rushing seasons! This has always proven to be a winning combination for UNC football, so here’s hoping that Coach D has been giving the idea some serious consideration!