Scheme a concern for Heels

CHAPEL HILL -- As Jim Grobe ran his Wake Forest football coaching record to 33-33 with a 24-17 win at North Carolina on Saturday, the Tar Heels and their fans may have been given a glimpse of their future.

With lame-duck John Bunting nearing the end of his run at Carolina, there's a storm of speculation about his successor.

Butch Davis, the former Miami coach, has been discussed a lot. There are pros and cons, all justified. Davis hasn't coached a college game since the 2000 season, and there's some reason to think he wants to give the NFL another another go.

Also mentioned have been several other possible candidates, one being Navy's Paul Johnson, a North Carolina native and Western Carolina graduate.

Where offensive systems are concerned, Johnson and Grobe are virtual carbon copies.

That doesn't necessarily mean Johnson would install the same run-oriented, misdirectional, low-risk schemes should he wind up in Chapel Hill. But first-year coaches normally don't stray far from their comfort zone, and the tactics that have generally worked for Johnson at Navy are much the same as those of Grobe.

No one is complaining at Wake Forest, of course.

Saturday's win sent the Deacons to 7-1 overall, 3-1 and tied for first place in the ACC's Atlantic Division, and all but locked up the league coach-of-the-year award for Grobe.

"They are a solid, tough team. That's the way Wake plays almost every game," said Carolina defensive tackle Kyndraus Guy, a junior from Hope Mills. "They make you work on every play."

The Deacons won this one the same way they've they won or lost all along with Grobe. They stayed around for 60 minutes and waited for the opponent to commit the crucial error.

In the process, redshirt freshman quarterback Riley Skinner threw just eight passes, but completed seven for 89 yards, including the game-winning strike to redshirt junior Kenneth Moore. For all practical purposes, Skinner's blocking on end-arounds and reverses were as instrumental in the win as the 39-yard pass to Moore.

Using two oversized, relatively slow backs -- 250-pound redshirt sophomore Rich Belton and 245-pound redshirt junior De'Angelo Bryant -- the Deacons were able to slug out 200 yards rushing on 40 carries. The defense bent almost to the bone but came up with the big play -- an interception by redshirt junior linebacker Jon Abbate -- with the game's outcome in the balance.

Grobe, at Wake, has kept it simple in blueprinting and complex in ground-game attacking. He is a good coach by anyone's definition and a great one by Wake Forest's standards. There have been long stretches in Deacons football history when seven wins would have been considered a big haul over a two-season period.

It's also important to keep in mind that Grobe has done it without an overwhelming degree of rancor in the stands or within the ranks. From the start, he had the solid commitment of the one person -- athletics director Ron Wellman -- who really counted. Most of the pressure to produce was placed on Grobe by Grobe.

The next coach at Carolina won't have that luxury. It's doubtful that the next coach will get as much as of a cushion as Bunting, whose record at the school fell to 25-43 overall and 1-7 for the season. Bunting and Grobe are in their sixth seasons, and while Bunting would be safe for at least another season at 33-33 overall, Carolina fans expect a good deal more than a break-even record from a coach on the job that long.

That brings us back to Johnson.

While it's probably harder to win games at Navy and Wake Forest, it's much more difficult to win and keep friends at Carolina. Even at the height of his success with the Heels, Mack Brown caught some grief in the stands for not being able to beat Florida State. That same situation won't return for years -- possibly ever -- but Carolina's next coach will have to do better than average over six years to genuinely energize the fan base.

Barry Switzer, during his coaching stint at Oklahoma, once said of his wishbone alignment, "As long as you're winning big, you can run the flying wedge offense and no one will criticize you. But if you lose one or two, they're going to say you're stupid for still trying to run the ball when you're down by two touchdowns."

That was the week his team smashed undefeated Carolina, 41-7, but a week after the Sooners had been shredded in Norman by John Elway and Stanford in 1980.

That was also about the time that then-Carolina coach Dick Crum said Carolina yearned to be an Ivy League school on Monday through Friday but Oklahoma on Saturday.

Those days are gone.

Carolina fans no longer expect to be Oklahoma on Saturday. But long term, they probably don't want to be Wake Forest or Navy, either. They don't want to have one breakout season each decade or so.

That issue needs to be resolved about Johnson.

Over six seasons, he'll almost certainly win more than 25 -- even 33 -- games at Carolina. But odds are, the offensive system he has now won't win enough to make the Tar Heels a regular visitor to the nation's top 25.