It’s a game every passionate sports fan plays at some point: The What If game.
What if the star player doesn’t get hurt early in the season? What if the ball bounces to our guy instead of the other team? What if the rival quarterback doesn’t complete that crazy Hail Mary pass on the final snap?
What if? What if? What if?
It can be a maddening ritual but you can’t escape it if you have even the slightest vested interest in a team.
The 2022 football season was ripe for What If scenarios for those who followed FBS action in North Carolina.
In many ways, it was one of the most successful seasons, collectively, on record for the likes of North Carolina, Duke, NC State, Wake Forest, East Carolina and Appalachian State. The Tar Heels and Blue Devils won nine games apiece, with UNC claiming the final ACC Coastal championship. The Pack, Deacs and Pirates each earned eight wins. All five schools earned bowl berths. The Devils, Deacs and Pirates won theirs. Carolina and State almost did.
Even though ASU missed out on bowl season, the Mountaineers became the darlings of the football world in September with back-to-back-to-back-to-back memorable games against UNC, Texas A&M, Troy and James Madison.
Yet, against all these respectable showings, so many What If questions linger. How things could have turned out differently – both for the good and the bad – for each of those six schools.
A football season is certainly not a linear endeavor, and our state’s top six FBS teams proved that a year ago. Before moving ahead to 2023, let your imaginations go and let’s play the What If game one last time with the 2022 campaign. Oh, what could have been! For better or for worse.
What if the Pirates hadn’t missed a couple of late field goal attempts against NC State (for the win) and Navy (to force another OT)? How do those two plays in September change the trajectory of a season that already turned out pretty good.
Do they find enough mojo to win at Cincinnati a few weeks later (Pirates lost 27-25). Does a 10- or 11-win ECU season, which was so close to reality, suddenly rank among the school’s best-ever?
What if? What if? What if?
What if Duke had been able to come up with a stop on Carolina’s final drive? The Devils had rallied back from a 31-21 deficit to take a 34-31 lead in the fourth quarter.
After UNC’s go-ahead score in the final minute, what if Riley Leonard’s final pass hadn’t been tipped? Would it still have been intercepted? Would Leonard have had another chance or two to get the Devils into the end zone against a porous defense that gave up big plays all season?
What if Duke pulls out that triumph and also narrow wins against Georgia Tech (23-20 loss in OT) and Pitt (28-26 loss). The Devils then are the team celebrating a Coastal championship and getting their shot at Clemson in the ACC finale. Maybe even getting some College Football Playoff buzz.
Would defensive-minded head coach Mike Elko have done a better job preparing for the Tigers’ new quarterback Cade Klubnik? Would Duke signal caller Riley Leonard be trumping Maye in ACC Player of the Year discussions? Would Elko be getting job offers he couldn’t refuse after just one season in Durham?
What if? What if? What if?
What if UNC had been able to hold on to an early 17-0 lead against Georgia Tech (which evaporated, inexplicably, into a 21-17 loss)? Do the Heels, at 10-1 instead of 9-2 and still on the fringes of the College Football Playoff conversation, give a more spirited performance the next week against rival NC State?
What if a kick goes through for the Heels in OT against the Wolfpack? Do quarterback Drake Maye and receiver Josh Downs work more magic in a second extra period to get the win? Does the air not come out of the season the way in did in reality (four losses in a row after that 9-1 start)? Does UNC get back to a New Year’s Six Bowl a few seasons after playing in the Orange?
Even in the Holiday Bowl against Oregon, what if the UNC defense had been able to stop Bo Nix and the Ducks on that final drive? The Heels defense bent A LOT a year ago but seemed to make just enough plays when it needed to at clutch times.
What if another one of those times had been in the fourth quarter against Oregon? At 10-4, does the season feel better to fans, players and coaches than a four-game losing skid at the end? And is the preseason hype machine buzzing on full throttle over the Heels heading into 2023?
On the contrary, what if the Heels lose a close early season game at App State (more on that below)? Do things go off the rails? Does UNC lose the next week, too, at Georgia State? Do other close games against Wake, Virginia and Miami go the wrong direction?
What if? What if? What if?
What if quarterback Devin Leary doesn’t get hurt against Florida State? The Pack gutted out an eight-win season with a three-man rotation of backups the rest of the way, and that is admirable for sure. And Ben Finley, fourth on the depth chart at one point, can always say he outdueled the ACC Player of the Year in a proud, chest-puffing afternoon in Chapel Hill.
But would a healthy Leary have helped State live up to all the hype laid onto the team in the preseason? Does State show better against lesser competition in Syracuse, Boston College and Louisville (all losses)? Does coach Dave Doeren earn his first 10- (or more) win season at NC State? Is the Pack in the running for a long-cherished New Year’s Six bowl (finally!)?
On the flip side, what if ECU’s kick at the buzzer goes through in the opener? What if Carolina makes its field goal attempt in overtime to keep that contest alive? What if MJ Morris isn’t able to engineer second-half magic against Virginia Tech, throwing three TD passes to cap a comeback from a 21-3 deficit? Does the Pack miss a bowl? Is Doeren’s seat hot coming into 2023?
Such razor thin margins in the world of college football.
What if? What if? What if?
What if the Mountaineers had been able to make one more defensive stop of its own against North Carolina in the home opener? The Mountaineers scored 40 points – 40 POINTS! – in the fourth quarter and still lost 63-61.
What if quarterback Chase Brice throws a better ball to a wide-open receiver on a two-point play with 31 seconds left? Instead of trailing by one and needing an onsides kick (which UNC returned for a touchdown), the Mountaineers instead would have found themselves holding a one-point lead, forcing UNC to drive the length of the field.
Amazingly, even after that misfire, Brice got another attempt at a two-point conversion, following his TD throw with nine ticks left to pull the Mountaineers within 63-61. What if Brice’s keeper on that crucial play nets another yard? That ties the game and forces overtime. Maybe the teams play to 100? Maybe they are still playing today?
Of course, on the flip side, what if Carolina downs the ball after the recovering the onsides kick instead of going to the house (giving App possession one more time, which they quickly turned into points)?
There are enough What Ifs in this game to dizzy the mind and fill a whole book. What if this was the most exciting football game ever played within the borders of North Carolina between two in-state teams? We think it just might have been.
Back to App, what if the Mountaineers don’t lose a big halftime lead against James Madison a few weeks later? What if the Mountaineers don’t fall 51-48 in double-overtime to Georgia Southern on the final day of the regular season?
What if App bags all three of those wins – against UNC, JMU and Georgia Southern, to go with an upset of Texas A&M and comeback victory on ESPN Game Day against Troy that actually happened? Are the Mountaineers, now in the Sun Belt championship game, in position to secure a New Year’s Six bowl? Could it have been App instead of Tulane playing Caleb Williams and Southern Cal in the Cotton Bowl?
What if? What if? What if?
What if Wake Forest had been able to hold off Clemson in an early September ACC Atlantic clash in Winston-Salem? The Deacs led 28-20 and 35-28 in the third quarter and 38-35 with 8:07 to play in the fourth. What if the Tigers miss a 52-yard game-tying field goal with four minutes to play? Or what if the Wake defense makes a stop in the first overtime after scoring a touchdown?
What would a Wake victory have done for the ACC race? Would the Deacs, which topped Florida State in Tallahassee the next week, have avoided that clunker against Louisville? Found enough to get past NC State and Carolina instead of suffering a three-game losing skid?
What would the mood be in Clemson had the Tigers been denied an ACC title game berth for a second year in a row? Would Dabo’s seat be warmer? Would Cade Klubnik have replaced DJ Uiagalelei sooner under center for the Tigers?
Would Wake QB Sam Hartman have moved on to Notre Dame if the Deacs had returned to the league title game for a second straight year, with a chance for third in 2023? What would an unprecedented rematch of Wake-UNC (or Wake-Duke – see other What Ifs above) have been like in Charlotte for the ACC title?
What if? What if? What if?
Conclusion
Of course, we can ask these What If questions all day long about all of these teams and all of these scenarios. But in many ways, it’s a fool’s errand. Content for summer message boards and bar stool conversations with your buddies.
The What If proposals didn’t happen. The balls bounced the way that they did, and the season ended just the way that the final standings say they did – UNC 9-5, Duke 9-4, NC State 8-5, Wake Forest 8-5, ECU 8-5, App State 6-6.
But wow, what an exciting few months the 2022 campaign gave us – plenty to talk about, rehash, savor (and agonize over) for years to come. And of course, leaving us with one more question to grapple with during these waning months before college football kicks off again:
What if the 2023 season is even more exciting and spell-binding than the last?
What if? What if? What if?
