The 2014 season began as quarterback Shane Carden and wide receiver Justin Hardy’s swan-song that had East Carolina fans sad about waving goodbye to two of their schools’ best players, but also anticipating a wildly fun finish to the Carden-Hardy era. The Pirates’ 8-5 season met preseason expectations nearly head-on, considering the Pirates were tabbed as the American Athletic Conference’s fourth-best team in the preseason media poll. But ECU’s wildly-fun 6-1 start to the year squashed the media’s low expectations and initiated fans to pre-plan for New Year’s day bowl trip.
In the end, however, the Pirates wildly-fun start limped to one of ECU’s most disappointing finishes in program history, as the Pirates lost four of their final six games, which in a true showcase of irony, placed the Pirates — you guessed it — fourth in the final conference standings.
Despite the end results, 2014 was filled with many jaw-dropping highlights from one of the more exciting groups to ever adorn the purple and gold. With ECU’s season in the book, time to give out final grades for each major team unit.
Offense: A-
Did you ever have a professor back in college that never gave out 100s? You could have written an essay as complete as a James Patterson novel and, still, no A+. Unfortunately for ECU, I’m that annoying professor who stops at 99 percent.
The Pirates had the nations’ fifth-ranked offensive unit in 2014, the third-best passing attack (371.9 yards per game), arguably the top quarterback-receiver combo in the FBS, and averaged over 35 points per game.
ECU quarterback Shane Carden finished his illustrious career in Greenville, North Carolina, as the Pirates all-time leading passer – his 4,736 yards passing this season was a major contributor to his all-time success.
The Texas native completed 63.3 percent of his passes and tossed 30 touchdowns – 10 of which were hauled in by star-receiver Justin Hardy (1,494 receiving yards on an AAC-best 121 receptions).
Carden-to-Hardy was an institution at ECU for the last three seasons. Against Tulane in late November, the Carden-Hardy connection reached its highest point when Hardy became the new NCAA career receptions leader.
An ocean of yards, a Top-5 QB, one the game’s all-time best receivers, and points scored in bunches; so, why am I being so stingy as a grader?
The answer: ECU’s once promising season sunk to 8-5 — and the offense doesn’t get a reprieve from taking part of the blame.
For all the incredible stats revealing why ECU was must-watch television on Saturdays, reading between the box scores, especially those post-November, shows an offensive unit that struggled to play “its game” for a full 60 minutes.
The defense was the main offender for the Pirates losing four of their last five games, but more on them in the next section. The defense came to play in the Pirates’ shocking 20-10 loss to Temple on November 1; the offense didn’t. The Pirates out-gained the Owls 428-135. Let me repeat for effect: 428-135. And they still lost. Temple (6-6) was an average team at best in ’14, but you certainly can’t fumble the ball five times as ECU did and expect to win against decent competition.
The turnovers stopped at five because Carden never threw an interception. It’s just he never threw a touchdown pass either, and had his lowest passer rating of the season — passing well below his 364.3 yards per game average (217). Carden’s unit was also held to its lowest scoring output since barely hanging 10 points in a loss to Virginia Tech in mid-September of last season.
For as great as Carden was, he played recklessly at times in the last five game, as if he felt it was all up to him to win games. Carden passed for 427 yards and two touchdowns in the Birmingham Bowl against Florida, but added two costly INTs – none more costly than the one thrown five yards from a potential game tying score (with a completed two-point conversion) that sealed the Gators 28-20 victory. Not the way Carden envisioned is ECU career to end.
Defense: B-
ECU’s defense was solid in 2014. It wasn’t the team’s weakest unit (more on that in the next section), but it also stepped several notches behind the offense in terms of efficiency. Still, finishing 38th nationally in total defense and allowing less than 400 yards in 10 of 13 games is solid, just nothing spectacular.
Linebacker Zeek Bigger was the Pirates’ best defender in 2014, finishing the year with 140 tackles (10.8 per game) and two interceptions. Junior defensive back Josh Hawkins led the team with five interceptions on the year, third-best in the AAC.
Saying something is solid is like saying it was “cool” or “good, but not great.” I deducted points from ECU’s grade in large part from two uninspiring performances in a crucial loss to Cincinnati that immediately ended the Pirates’ AAC title run, and for a last-second Hail Mary disaster that gave UCF a miraculous 32-30 win and left ECU picking up the pieces.
The defense played two-hand touch against the Bearcats, allowing Gunner Kiel to slice and dice the secondary for 436 yards and four touchdowns. In a 54-46 loss, stopping the Bearcats one more time would have made the difference.
UCF’s miracle Hail Mary win was inexplicable. How do two defenders fully aware that UCF must complete a 51-yard touchdown to win let a single receiver get behind them in the end-zone? That’s a question Pirates’ fans may never hear an answer to.
Special Teams: D
The often overlooked but never less important special teams unit was, overall, underwhelming in 2014 for ECU.
The Pirates finished 113th nationally in field goal percentage (58 percent), and senior place-kicker Warren Harvey went a putrid 14-of-24 on field goals. Harvey is one departing senior whose production ECU can easily replace.
Kick and punt return teams struggled to create openings for returners, finishing eighth and ninth, respectively, in the conference.
Punter Worth Gregory put together a solid season finishing with the conference’s second-best punting average at 43.6 yards per punt. At least someone was “special” on special teams.
Coaching: B
Ruffin McNeill is one of the country’s top head coaches – no question about it. He’s not on a Nick Saban level in terms of success, but that doesn’t diminish the stability McNeill’s brought to ECU, nor the deep affection he has for his alma mater that’s helped him build a strong bond with Pirate Nation.
If I was measuring McNeill’s success to this point in his ECU tenure, he’d have a much higher grade. But the Pirate’s season fell apart after starting 6-1; ranked No.18 in the AP Poll, and the clear favorite to win the AAC and represent the Group of Five conferences in a New Year’s Six bowl. Following October, ECU went 2-4 to close out the season; knocking the Pirates two games behind their goal of back-to-back 10 win seasons.
McNeill deserves criticism for the Pirates’ fall from grace, especially for his poor clock-management in the final 1:47 against UCF. Instead of kicking a field goal to put the game away for good, or trying a positive rushing play, NcNeill chose for Shane Carden to scramble backwards to knock time off the clock. NcNeill learned quickly on UCF’s final drive that 10 seconds is all a team needs to come back and bite you.
The traumatic loss to UCF, culminated with poor time-management late in the game, left an ugly mark on a team McNeill appeared to have well prepared for the first seven games.
Overall: B-
ECU’s 2014 season would’ve been viewed as highly successful if not for the particular pattern of the Pirates’ wins and losses. If ECU started out 2-4 and finished 6-1, instead of the reverse, most would have considered 8-5 as a successful debut season in the AAC — given the Pirates’ step-up in competition from playing in Conference USA. But starting out 6-1 with wins over Virginia Tech and North Carolina from the ACC raised expectations for this squad to the steepest level: championship or bust.
Well, the Pirates were a bust and now they must regroup without ECU greats Shane Carden and Justin Hardy.
Carden and his top target Hardy are forever enshrined in Pirate glory for the excitement they brought to the football field. Unfortunately, they’ll also be remembered for not quite getting it done; for coming up just a few yards short each season.
ECU fans, don’t worry, your team will find success in its new home, even without two of its all-time greatest players. The 2014 Pirates weren’t ready to handle success, as mind-boggling as that may seem. If coach McNeill continues to build his Pirates with the same passion that brought his crew to four bowl games in five seasons, ECU will eventually transform into a perennial AAC contender. We’ll just have to wait till 2015 to see if the process takes steps forward, or, like 2014, a few extra steps back.
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