Takeaways: UNC Football Summer Update

Recruiting moved online for nearly 15 months following the arrival of the coronavirus in March 2020, which fueled an explosion of activity on college campuses once the dead period was lifted on June 1. UNC was no exception.

“Recruiting has been crazy in June,” Brown said. “We took 15 months of recruiting and put it in three weeks. So, as you can imagine, we had unofficial visits, we had official visits. We had evaluations, which we've never had before, where a young man could come in and we could work him out for an hour with our on-the-field coaches and you had to have a trainer there, too, but we've never been able to do that before.”

After making introductions via Zoom for so long, there were plenty of surprises once the interested parties finally met face-to-face.

“It's amazing, sometimes you'd say, ‘Oh my gosh, he's so much bigger than he looked on Zoom.’ And then some you may say, ‘He must've been standing on a table. He's not very tall.’ So, it was a great evaluation process for the families and for us in both cases.”

The preseason hype and expectations for North Carolina are high and it starts with Sam Howell being a favorite for the Heisman Trophy. As a way to combat them and to prevent his players from thinking too far ahead, Mack Brown is splitting the season into four quadrants of three games.

When UNC begins training camp on Aug. 5, the sole focus will be the first three games of the season and nothing else, per Brown.

It begins with the season opener at Virginia Tech on Sept. 3, the home opener against Georgia State on Sept. 11, and then the ACC home opener against Virginia on Sept. 18. All three games have night kickoffs at 6 p.m., 7:30 p.m. and 7:30 p.m., respectively.

It’s not a secret that the freshmen who enroll in school a semester early are a significant step-ahead of the freshmen that get to school in the summer. They’ve properly acclimated to college life, the rigor of college football practice and fully know the expectations the coaching staff and fellow players have for them.

Expectations will be the same for those who practiced in the spring and for those whose first full practice is on Aug. 5. Brown said the competition level should be above 100 percent on every play. No loafing, no hands on hips, etc. Pretty basic stuff. The difference is guys like Keeshawn Silver, Drake Maye, Power Echols, etc. already have an understanding of that.

The best way to quickly get the incoming freshmen ready, according to Brown, is to hope their teammates and the team leaders take charge to help them learn how to practice and how to compete. A couple players that are looking to immediately compete for playing time are four-star running back Kamarro Edmonds and four-star offensive tackle Eli Sutton.

The NCAA giveth and the NCAA taketh away. Last fall, the organization’s Division I Council voted to grant all football players an additional year of eligibility in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. In an effort to account for enlarged rosters across the country, the NCAA removed the total counter limit of 85 scholarships to allow seniors room to return to school in 2021.

That limit will be back in place for the 2022 season, which serves to hurt high school seniors who will potentially be squeezed in the 2022 recruiting cycle, while also causing headaches for football programs that have significant totals of freshmen and redshirt freshmen – in terms of eligibility – this fall.

“It's been crazy,” Brown said. “What year are they are? How does Jeremy [Sharpe] list them? Is he a sixth-year senior? Is he a super senior? What does that mean? We sat down as a staff and we did two things that I think helped us. We put down their academic status. When does he graduate? Because we want every player to graduate. And then we put how many years of eligibility, so he might graduate in December of 21 and have three years left of eligibility, so what does that make him he's a senior academically or he's a graduate, but he has three years left. It's just crazy. So we're trying to go back to his eligibility status with his academics.”

That will allow for the coaching staff to keep tabs on which players have graduated and therefore are eligible to continue their careers as graduate transfers or make the decision to enter the transfer portal.

There has been and there always will be controversy surrounding the College Football Playoffs. When the BCS was done away with, a lot of people were happy with the decision to expand to four teams. Others were worrisome about it being the same two teams no matter what. It’s the same worry with expanding it even further.

Brown has been a proponent for the expansion beyond four teams. But what do his players think of the new 12-team proposal that was brought before the decision makers in June?

They were against it and close to evenly split between going to a six-team or an eight-team playoff. The concerns about 12 teams were the idea of having to play 17 games in a season. Additionally, there were conversations about if there could ever be 12 teams that were good enough to win a national championship.

Regardless, it looks like the 12-team playoff is the future, which could mean a team like UNC gets a shot at the title if it can’t get past Clemson in the ACC.

There aren’t any surprises regarding what UNC will be working on leading up to the 2021 season. Building depth, searching for elite pass rushers, excelling at special teams and figuring out the back-up quarterback competition.

These were all focuses during the spring, but it’ll be taken up a notch in the month leading up to the season. The Tar Heels have elite talent on the defensive line with Keeshawn Silver, Jahvaree Ritzie and Kedrick Bingley-Jones, to name a few, but none of those three have played a college football game yet. Then, there’s guys like Des Evans, Myles Murphy and Kaimon Rucker that have all shown the ability to get to the quarterback without schemes, but can they do it on a consistent basis?

This all has to do with depth, as well, which will be at the forefront of Brown’s mind throughout the season. Special teams has been a need for UNC to step up to the next level since the Hall of Fame head coach got back to Chapel Hill so that’s something to watch to see how Brown achieves that with his team.

Lastly, the competition between Jacolby Criswell and Drake Maye officially begins on Aug. 5.

As name, image and likeness legislation rolls out across the country, there will inevitably be obstacles arise that were missed during the initial conversations of recent years. One such example is the restrictions of student visas, which prohibit international student-athletes from participating in NIL opportunities due to potential income limitations. Another is income limits for student-athletes utilizing Federal Pell Grants, which are awarded to undergraduate students who display significant financial need.

“There's also a situation where for those who are on Pell Grant, if you make up to $10,000, when you go over that $10,000 mark it starts to affect your Pell Grant and decrease it,” Brown said. “We've really worked hard to make sure that our guys understand every finite detail about all of the positives and the concerns.”

UNC’s athletic department reported 139 Pell Grant recipients, including 51 within the football program, in its 2019-20 financial disclosure to the NCAA.

Coaches aren’t able to host workouts or practices until training camp begins on Aug. 5. The summer is filled with player-led workouts and weight lifting sessions led by strength and conditioning coach Brian Hess.

To keep things fresh and new, Hess held a player draft with the captains of each team being upperclassmen. Points were rewarded for everything from attending tutoring sessions and class, being on-time for meetings and excelling in the weight room to stimulate competition.

The winning team will get an award at the end of the summer, and then all of that competition will translate to the field for training camp.

One solid gauge of player buy-in can be found in a team’s Academic Progress rate, a NCAA measure designed to track the academic performance of scholarship students with a focus on eligibility and retention. UNC announced in June that Brown’s football program had set a single-season high with a 997.

“I'm very proud that the Carolina football team had a 997 out of 1000,” Brown said. “That's 23 points higher than any Carolina football team has ever had. I'm really proud of the way the guys have worked, even through COVID with all the unusual things that they had to do to go virtual. And they've still done a great job. The last six semesters we've had a team core GPA of 3.167. So, it's been over a 3.0, and I'm really, really proud of that as well moving forward.”

Outside linebacker Desmond Evans was the prized recruit in UNC’s 2020 recruiting class, although the lack of spring ball due to COVID-19 in addition to an illness that sidelined him early last fall prevented the Sanford, N.C. product from showcasing his versatile talents on the football field. Now, with a complete offseason strength and conditioning program under his belt, as well as 15 spring practices, the UNC defensive staff is expecting a breakthrough season for the sophomore.

“Desmond's gained so much weight,” Brown said. “He’s like 265-270 now where he was 235 when he got here. He's learning how to pass rush at a very high level, because again to get where we need to get, you're going to be playing against the best tackles in the country.”

Jay Bateman’s defense has largely relied on scheme to create sack and tackle for loss opportunities, although Evans is a big reason why individual talent should lead to hurries and pressures without the necessity of X’s and O’s.

“We feel like that it's time for him now to step up,” Brown said. “We saw flashes last year and We think he can be an every-down player now.”