Snowden the Monster helps wreck Carolina’s plans with a 4-sack night

By Jerry Ratcliffe

It was superb timing when Charles Snowden turned into a monster on Halloween night.

The Virginia senior linebacker didn’t require a mask, fangs, bolts in his neck or any of the traditional features of any lusus naturae to terrorize 15th-ranked North Carolina. All he had to do was be himself.

Snowden sacked Tar Heels quarterback Sam Howell four times, including a sequence when he had three sacks on three plays, in helping UVA win a 44-41 shootout against the high-octane UNC offense. In addition to his career-high sacks, Snowden also recorded a forced fumble that led to a UVA touchdown and 10 tackles.

For his effort, Snowden was named ACC Linebacker of the Week. Just to show how crucial Snowden’s performance was, Carolina’s Howell was named ACC Quarterback of the Week despite a losing effort.

“Charles is an electric player,” said Virginia linebacker Nick Jackson, who leads the ACC in tackles. “He’s got havoc written all over him.

“When you see (number) 11 on the field it’s really comforting because he’s a playmaker and he made plays all night long.”

Indeed he did.

Snowden’s four sacks were the most by a Cavalier since 1996 when Jamie Sharper posted four against the Tar Heels in the famous Wahoos comeback, also against Mack Brown’s sixth-ranked Carolina team that knocked UNC out of Fiesta Bowl contention. No player in the FBS has many sacks in one game this season as Snowden, who ranks fifth in the ACC with five sacks and seventh in tackles-for-loss with 8.5.

“I wanted to pull the team together, put a win together,” Snowden said of his performance against the Heels. “Who knows how many night games I’ll get in Scott Stadium. Being a senior, the sense of urgency started to set in.”

The outside linebacker said that he felt the defensive performance, at least from the havoc standpoint, was a continuation of the momentum it built during a close loss at Miami the week before. He knew it would take a greater effort to knock off Carolina, which featured one of the nation’s most explosive offenses.

“They’re up there,” Snowden said in comparing UNC’s offenses to others that he has faced during his career. “The greatest [offense] I’ve seen since I’ve been here was Louisville and Lamar Jackson. [Carolina] is explosive. Whether it’s a big play on the ground or in the air, they can explode at any moment.”

One of those sacks came during a critical moment in the third quarter when Snowden strip-sacked Howell, with the Cavaliers recovering and scoring five plays later to go up 41-20.

“I saw [Howell] wanted to throw it downfield, but he must not have liked what he saw and he tried to tuck it,” Snowden said of the play. “He was in that awkward, ‘am I going to throw it or am I going to tuck it.’ Zane [Zandier] and I both him him and the ball came out.”

His fourth sack matched Miami’s Greg Rosseau as the only two ACC players to post four sacks in a game over the past two seasons, and Snowden became only the 11th ACC player since 2000 to put up four-plus sacks in a single game.

As Snowden said, his performance was a carryover from the Miami game. During those back-to-back games, he has 18 tackles, 8.5 tackles for loss and five sacks.

As Bronco Mendenhall said, it wasn’t as if Snowden wasn’t trying or playing well in the four games prior to last week. The coach said the staff recognized that because the senior practices so hard, they decided to hold him back a bit to keep him fresh for games.

“I had gotten off to a slow start this year, so to be producing was great,” Snowden grinned. “Sacks are always a great thing.”

The performance against UNC was quite ironic because Snowden admitted that the Tar Heels were the team of his dreams when he was a kid growing up in Silver Spring, Md.

“I actually grew up a huge UNC fan,” Snowden chuckled. “I have a picture [of himself] with Roy Williams that I have framed. To go 4-0 against North Carolina (and Duke, whom he detested growing up because of his love of UNC) is something I will proudly wear on my sleeve for the rest of my life.”

For the rest of their lives, Carolina’s offense will remember how the monster came alive and wrecked them on All Hallows Eve.