Heels Happy, Pack Half-Empty

The ice has been broken. Or, rather, has melted. Every ACC football team has played once, the apparent signal for observers to jump to conclusions like kids encountering a swimming pool for the first time all summer. We are also starting to learn a bit about the new coaches in our midst, particularly Tom O’Brien at N.C. State.

Five of eight ACC teams defeated nonconference opponents in their 2007 debuts. Within the league Boston College and new coach Jeff Jagodzinski won at home against Wake Forest and Clemson won at home against Florida State.

FSU’s Bobby Bowden was asked whether his team would rebound from Monday’s 24-18 loss at Clemson, in which a new offense netted one first down and 62 total yards in the first half. “You never know,” he said. “The season’s too young.”

But why heed the cautious voice of experience? Bowden has coached at Tallahassee for a mere 32 years, capturing a pair of national titles and amassing more wins than any major-college coach in history. Clearly it's more fun to speculate about Al Groh’s professional life expectancy at Virginia or Lloyd Carr’s at Michigan, or to wonder whether a team's prospects for a major bowl or a winning season already are fatally wounded by a loss.

The most impressive victory by an ACC team was Georgia Tech’s 33-3 thrashing of Notre Dame in South Bend, which should quiet critics of Yellow Jackets coach Chan Gailey, at least for a few weeks. As O’Brien did at Boston College, all Gainey does is win in consistent but unspectacular fashion.

The weekend’s least impressive triumph, at least on paper, was North Carolina’s 37-14 drubbing of visiting James Madison, the only ACC opponent that hailed from a lower level of competition. (The NCAA’s new nomenclature, which makes competitive strata sound like land developments, is grating and gratuitously obscure: JMU hails from the Football Championship Subdivision, aka I-AA. This is unhappily reminiscent of days when the media referred to “The Artist formerly known as Prince,” shortened to TAFKAP.)

Still, getting started on a positive note had intrinsic value for the Tar Heels beyond notching a win, any win. Davis, trying to conjure a big-time atmosphere around UNC football, was rewarded with enthusiasm and execution from a squad dominated by underclassmen.

The victory made it easier to forge a sense of common purpose, an essential trait when confronting the inevitable tribulations of a long season. “I was pleased with the way in which they really cheered for each other,” Davis said of his players. He noted support was present following mistakes as well as good plays. “Those are things that speak volumes about the character and integrity of your football team,” he said.

The Heels’ mettle surely will be tested on Saturday at Greenville, where they journey to take on East Carolina, lately a member of Conference USA. In case you’re keeping score, the ACC was 2-1 in openers against squads from C-USA, with Miami beating Marshall and Virginia Tech edging ECU. The loss was suffered by N.C. State, causing the tenor of O’Brien’s weekly press conference to be a bit less cheery than the one held by Davis.

Not only did O’Brien start his Raleigh tenure with a defeat, but the very first play produced the kind of mental breakdown the former BC coach was supposed to eradicate.

Facing a basic formation O’Brien said his players “might have seen 1,000 times” in practice, the Wolfpack lined up improperly, allowing the Knights’ Kevin Smith to take a sweep 80 yards for a touchdown just 20 seconds into the game. The Wolfpack trailed 25-3 at halftime on its home turf, suffered several of its seven penalties at the most inopportune times, and for much of the game bore an unhappy resemblance to the team that ended last season with seven consecutive losses.

The Pack did come alive in the second half. The defense yielded only 38 yards, two first downs, and zero points in the final 30 minutes. Harrison Beck won the starter’s job at quarterback, leaving the bench to spark the offense.

But, as any coach will tell you, coming close is not arriving at all. The dissatisfied O’Brien said inconsistency of concentration and effort against Central Florida reflected the way Pack players had practiced since last spring. “Once the lights went on, they went back to some old bad habits that we still have to work on and we still have to get corrected,” the coach said.

“The first thing they’ve got to recognize is that they’re not as good as they think they are,” O’Brien said of his new charges. “A lot of these guys have an over-inflated image of who and what they are. With the limited ability that’s here, they have to play hard and play smart every game. If they don’t, we’re going to have the same result week in and week out.”

This can readily be construed as a slap at O’Brien’s predecessor, the cocky and self-promoting Chuck Amato, who sold the public on the richness of talent he assembled at Raleigh.

If it was a dig, we learned O’Brien’s tongue is sharper and less disciplined than we were led to believe.

Keep in mind, however, that O’Brien described himself Monday as “a half-empty guy,” someone who looks at a glass and sees what is missing. Amato was inclined to oversell what he had. This shift in outlook might give players a bit of mental whiplash, given the newness of N.C. State’s regime change and their previous familiarity with Amato.

If O’Brien thinks players must accept his worldview before appropriate change can occur, he has work to do. Tight end Marcus Stone, a fifth-year senior, flatly disagreed with the coach’s assertion that members of the Wolfpack had an unjustified sense of self-worth.

In fact, Stone came away from the UCF loss with a half-full interpretation, and pride intact.

“I think I learned that we’ll fight,” he said. Then, garbling his clichés, he added: “I have a team that’s not going to throw it into the tank even when we’re down by 20-some points. I’ve got a team with a lot of heart. I’ll work with that. I mean, we’ll work with that.”