Tech’s Williams bounces back after fumble in loss to UNC

BLACKSBURG — Ryan Williams stayed up all night Thursday thinking about the fumble that led to the deciding points in North Carolina’s 20-17 upset win over then-No. 14 Virginia Tech.

His teammates tried to convince him that he wasn’t to blame for the Hokies’ loss, but his fumble at the Tar Heels’ 24-yard line with 2:02 left stayed with him. It haunted him. “It makes me sick to my stomach,” he told reporters Sunday.

There was no consoling him, even though his one bad play pales in comparison to his multitude of good ones this season.

“In athletics, you’re out there and you’ve just got to realize there’s going to be some bad with the good,” Tech coach Frank Beamer said. “And there’s going to be a lot of good from that guy; there already has been in the short time he’s been our tailback, and there will be a lot more good before he leaves here.”

At the end of the game, Williams sat on the bench with his head down as UNC’s players celebrated Casey Barth’s 21-yard winning field goal, and he stayed to himself the entire night and most of the next day.

He said he didn’t fall asleep until 8 a.m. Friday morning, and that was only because he was too tired to stay up any longer, and then he stayed in his room all day Friday, watching TV.

“It was probably about Saturday or Sunday before I really started talking to people,” said Williams, a redshirt freshman. “I was really down on myself. I didn’t even go to class Friday. I stayed in my room.

“I couldn’t stomach looking at people’s faces, the same people who looked at me every day and told me how proud they were of me and how I am their favorite player on the team … Just being able to look into their faces and just know I may have disappointed them in some type of way, I just couldn’t do it.”

He finally convinced himself to leave his cave of solitude, and instead of disappointment on people’s faces, he received an outpouring of support.

“I went out Saturday and it made me feel a lot better that a lot of people are still in my corner and they basically told me that regardless of what happened, they feel like I’m their favorite person and one mistake doesn’t compare to my whole season,” said Williams, who had gone 162 carries this season before fumbling Thursday.

Williams’ teammates and coaches showed the downtrodden tailback support almost immediately.

They knew he would take the loss hard, but they also knew there were many players on the team who could take responsibility for the setback.

“It was a team effort. We could have gone out there and made a whole lot more plays and we wouldn’t have been in that situation at that point of the game,” Tech wide receiver Dyrell Roberts said. “Just him thinking that he cost us the game and for him to get down on himself, I really wanted to talk to him and let him know that we’re still behind him, we’re still in his corner.”

The Hokies, who visit East Carolina on Thursday night, lost two fumbles against the Tar Heels, one inside the Carolina 30-yard line, and committed penalties at the worst possible times, including a holding call in the fourth quarter that wiped out a 20-yard Williams touchdown that would have made the final field goal moot.

Tech’s defense, while strong most of the night, allowed the Tar Heels to drive 78 yards in 16 plays and eat up 9:05 of the fourth-quarter clock during their penultimate drive that led to the game-tying 19-yard Barth field goal.

A lot of people were on the hook for that loss, not just Williams.

Williams was hard on himself, but his teammates knew he wasn’t the type of person to stay down for long.

“I told him that I knew he was going to be ready to bounce back and be that type of guy (to put the fumble behind him and move on),” Hokies cornerback Rashad Carmichael said. “There really wasn’t much we had to say. I felt that he could handle it.”

The proof of Williams’ resilience came with the start of practice on Saturday. He was back to being the Williams of old, making plays and having a good time doing it.

“He’s back to being the same Ryan Williams,” Carmichael said, “you know cutting back and forth in practice against us.”