GREENVILLE, N.C. - It's hard to be airborne when you're lying flat on your back.
Spencer Romine, the appointed pilot of this would-be Duke football flight, was never given the chance to take control of the plane. He was hit often and hit hard. He was sacked four times and hurried constantly, surviving constant blow after blow. Three particularly hard hits by attacking Pirates led to two fumbles and a lame-duck interception.
Romine was modest about it after the game, saying only, "Yeah, they got me pretty good a few times," but his appearance told the story. Romine looked exhausted, completely drained of energy. He was a beaten rag doll with a giant bag of ice taped over his newly separated shoulder.
Romine's words did not do justice to the beating he took, but Carl Franks knew what he saw-a guy who had just survived a massacre.
"You can say this about Spencer: That was a brave performance," Franks said. "He's a gutty guy. You have to give him credit, because he took some good licks. I was proud of him the way he kept getting up."
Romine's teammates saw it too.
"I was real worried," Scottie Montgomery said. "It scared me when he took the first hit and laid there for a little bit, but when he popped back up it made me feel good. He took a punishing tonight. It's not good. It worries me. I don't like to see him get hit like that and I know he doesn't like to get hit like that. We have to protect him better."
The job of protecting Romine goes to the offensive line, and Saturday afternoon, that unit failed in its mission.
"It's tough because you're playing, you're playing, you're playing and you turn around and you see your quarterback lying on the ground," senior lineman Austin Smithwick said. "That happened one too many times for me or anybody to be happy. It's frustrating. By the end of the third quarter or the fourth, I knew it was getting bad. We tried to rally and do our best, but we just couldn't get the job done."
Duke's line is not the biggest in the country, but it is quick and has plenty of starts under its collective belt. Both Franks and Smithwick said that ECU defensive coordinator Tim Rose ran a few schemes that the Pirates had not run before, but neither blamed confusion for the reason Romine now has Jeff Kerr's No. 84 imprinted on his chest.
The problem came from the aerial game plan that was supposed to save the program. At least according to the Pirates, Airborne may be its own worst enemy. When asked how often he blitzed, ECU coach Steve Logan answered, "Every snap, baby. You mark that down."
Duke's inability to establish any kind of running game made Rose's job easy. All he had to do was blitz. Airborne was exactly as advertised-pass early and pass often.
The Blue Devils rushed for a measly 32 yards all game and as soon as they fell behind, it was clear the running game was out the window. Once Logan and Rose saw that, the contest became a field day for a blitz-happy defense.
"We really mixed it up, the fact that they threw the ball the whole game, it just let us loose," Kerr said. "It told us all we had to do was blitz. It was a free-for-all for us."
This past week East Carolina coaches have studied their fair share of Florida game tapes. They were well-prepared for the type of attack that Franks was going to bring. But Florida has always been a two-dimensional team. As many great quarterbacks and receivers the Gators have had, they've also had good running backs to change things up.
Franks knows that as well as anyone.
"I told the team we can't drop back there and throw the ball all the time," Franks said. "We didn't do much with our running game.... I've said all along, for us to have success and the success I've experienced, you have to be able to run the ball; we can't drop back and throw it every down."
Kerr was the biggest beneficiary of the strategy, often cruising into the backfield uncontested, needing only to break a block of a running back. Midway through the fourth quarter, Kerr didn't even need to do that as a wide-open set allowed him to blindside Romine and force the fumble that clinched the game.
After his player-of-the-game performance, Kerr said he didn't know much about Duke, but was well aware of its Airborne promotion.
"We didn't know anything about these guys. What we knew about them was the little wings on their program," Kerr said. "'Air Duke', so we were just guessing they were going to air the ball out.... We didn't think they were going to run the ball the whole game. When they finally ran, we were saying, 'Yeah, I guess they're a normal football team.'"
The Blue Devils will not be a normal football team under Carl Franks, nor should they be. But even the inventor of Airborne knows he needs something more normal than 23 carries for 32 yards.
Until opponents are forced to respect the run, they will blitz all night long. That's what happened Saturday, and that is why Spencer Romine has been swallowing a lot of aspirin this weekend.
Before airplanes take off, they must first gather a lot of speed on the runway. It appears that the same may be true of an Airborne offense.
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