Tar Heels Hope Tennis Treatment a Tune-up for Dropped Passes

Carolina coaches served up a solution during the open week

After watching receivers drop three certain touchdowns at Georgia Tech and several other easy catches leading up to the open date, Mack Brown did his best to cover for his guys even though he knew the truth.

“I tried to help them the other day in Atlanta and said, ‘It's the sun. Man, the sun's in their eyes,’” he said. “Well, there wasn't any sun. It was shady.”

On a day that Sam Howell completed 33 of 51 pass attempts for 376 yards with four touchdowns, receiver Dazz Newsome took responsibility, admitting Howell’s numbers should have been even better.

“We catch all them balls, that’s another 200 yards,” he said.

Newsome’s ability to finish catches has improved this season after getting contacts, but he’s still dropped a few — just as Dyami Brown, Beau Corrales and Toe Groves all have, sometimes before and after making highlight-reel catches in the same games.

For Brown, there’s no explanation beyond focus.

“I think so,” he said. “They can catch; they're talented.”

For every frustrating drop the Tar Heels have had this season, there's been a spectacular catch like Carl Tucker's touchdown vs. Appalachian State.

James Guillory | USA TODAY Sports

Sometimes, drops are contagious, with one mistake leading to the next as the game tightens. It’s a problem that plagued Corrales over his first two seasons at Carolina, finally seeing improvement this season under the guidance of offensive coordinator Phil Longo.

“A lot of times, if I had a drop, I would kind of beat myself up a little too much on it,” he said. “Longo has done a really good job teaching us this, ‘Don’t Blink’ mentality where if something does go wrong, it doesn’t do anyone good to hold your head over it.”

Luckily for the Tar Heels, they took care of business with relative ease in Atlanta, but in any other game, those missed opportunities could mean the difference in contending for the Coastal Division crown and being eliminated in October.

So, when the dropsies popped up during the open week, receivers coach Lonnie Galloway went to work on correcting the issue, spending about 45 minutes after practice tossing tennis balls to his group.

Brown had a friend out for practice that day and he didn’t understand why in the world ACC receivers would spend nearly an hour catching those tiny balls.

“I said, ‘You know when you go to the golf course and they have these little bitty holes, and you're trying to putt in. Then when you see the real hole, it's real big?’ I haven't seen that big hole yet (in) my golf (game), but same thing with football,” Brown said. “Football is huge. If you can catch a tennis ball, and have to focus on that, you ought to be able to catch a football.”

Longo has no doubt his guys are capable of making both the easy and spectacular catches, so it’s up to him and Galloway to ensure they’ve got the focus necessary to do it.

That’s where the tennis balls and a few other drills come in.

“Well the big misnomer is drops are all about whether you have good hands or bad hands, and it’s not,” he said. “It’s eyes and focus; that’s what changes it … it really comes down to receivers focusing in on the ball and finishing the catch. And that’s just discipline; it’s eye discipline, it’s focus on the football.”

No doubt, there were more drops than Longo would have liked at Georgia Tech, but given what he’s gotten from his offense over the past six weeks, he’s optimistic that won’t turn into a trend on Saturday in Blacksburg.

“With this group, when you emphasize something, you get it,” he said. “So, the emphasis has been securing the ball and finishing the catch. So, I would hope that that’s an area we improve on going into the Virginia Tech game.”