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Hard lesson learned the hard way

Key targets still ahead, but the big one got away

By Brett Friedlander
©2014 Bonesville.net
All rights reserved.

One game does not a season make, or so the saying goes. And in the strictest sense of the word, East Carolina’s season didn’t actually end as a result of last Saturday’s stunning, self-inflicted 20-10 loss at Temple.

As coach Ruffin McNeill and his players will point out ad nauseum between now and the time they travel to Cincinnati to play the Bearcats next Thursday night, there are still goals to accomplish and a potential American Athletic Conference championship to chase.

But that doesn’t change the fact that the Pirates may never have suffered a more damaging defeat or wasted a greater opportunity than the one they fumbled away in the cold and rain of Philadelphia’s Lincoln Financial Field.

The first tangible sign of that came less than 24 hours after the final whistle when ECU fell out of both major national polls. The second came a day later when quarterback Shane Carden, fresh off a pedestrian 24 of 41, 217-yard performance, failed to make the list of semifinalists for the Maxwell Award – symbolic of the nation’s best college player.

And the fallout has only just begun.

As disheartening as Saturday’s loss might be now, the full effect of the damage it caused won’t fully be realized until late December and early January. That’s when the Pirates, even if they win out through the end of the regular season, will be playing against a .500 ACC team in a second-tier bowl in a half-empty stadium while former Conference USA rival Marshall and its star quarterback Rakeem Cato capture the nation’s attention against an SEC team in the Peach, Cotton or Fiesta.

Think that’s not a big deal?

Ask Central Florida and Blake Bortles what last year’s Fiesta Bowl win against Baylor did for them.

Opportunities such as this, the kind that ECU and its fans have dreamed about forever, are worth far more than the million dollar payouts the so-called “Access Bowls” offer and they don’t come along often. Considering the makeup of the Pirates’ roster, with seniors at virtually every important position, there’s no telling when – if ever – they’ll get another realistic shot at being the nation’s highest-ranked non-Power Five team.

So what went wrong?

You can blame it on the weather, a fractured schedule that may have helped throw ECU off its rhythm, complacency or just plain bad luck. They may all have been contributing factors.

The one thing that is not in dispute is that the Pirates have no one but themselves to blame for a loss that in retrospect, was only a matter of time in coming.

Despite going 3-0 to start their AAC schedule, they haven’t been the same team since their emotional 70-41 thrashing of rival North Carolina all the way back on Sept. 20.

First they let a dreadful Southern Methodist team stick around for three quarters before finally putting the Mustangs away with an uninspired effort. A week later, they fell behind South Florida 17-7 before Carden rallied his team for three unanswered touchdowns in the second half to win going away.

Then after a second bye in four weeks, the Pirates had to score twice in the fourth quarter to again narrowly escape an upset – this time against a UConn team whose only win to that point was a three-point squeaker against Stony Brook.

Saturday, ECU’s luck finally ran out despite outgaining its opponent whopping 428-135 margin.

Afterwards, McNeill and his players said all the right things when asked to put the damaging loss into perspective – spinning it as only a temporary setback in the context of a long season.

But you know what they say about actions speaking louder than words.

From the way the players were hitting each other at practice on Wednesday, the Pirates’ first workout since returning from their Temple of Doom, the enormity of the opportunity they’ve wasted may finally have begun to sink in.

“I don’t feel like we were ourselves for the past couple of weeks,” wide receiver Isaiah Jones said. “We almost got in this complacent setting where everything was just going right. The mindset wasn’t there and that loss really humbled us. That’s what a loss does to you sometimes.

"We’re back. We’re that team that has that chip on their shoulder again. Our backs are kind of up against the wall right now. Everything that we want to accomplish is ahead of us.”

And yet, even if they do go on to run the table, post double-digit victories for the second straight year and raise a championship banner in their AAC debut, the Pirates may still look back at this 2014 season with regret for all the things they could have accomplished and didn’t.

Contact Brett Friedlander

PAGE UPDATED 11/07/14 03:48 PM.

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