University of North Carolina Athletics
COUNTDOWN TO KICKOFF: Lucas: In The Classroom With The O-Line
August 25, 2002 | Football
Aug. 25, 2002
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By Adam Lucas
TarheelBlue.com
For Carolina's players and coaches, Wednesday night's scrimmage didn't end when the final play was run around 9:30 p.m.
The team left the field, yes, but they knew there was plenty of dissection yet to be done. Carolina's hardworking video squad assembled the tape of the scrimmage for the coaching staff to go over Thursday morning, and each position group watched video from the evening's practice less than 24 hours later with their position coach.
For the Tar Heels' offensive linemen, it was a chance to see what went right and what didn't in a scrimmage that generally featured solid pass protection and sporadic rushing gains. When line coach Hal Hunter entered the o-line meeting room Thursday just before 2:15, he didn't waste time with introductions. With a handful of players, including starting left tackle Skip Seagraves, who took a knee from Chase Page in the helmet on Wednesday's first play and suffered a concussion, finishing their weightlifting, Hunter went straight for the video machine.
There's a certain hierarchy to the linemen's meeting room, which features the word "Humble" written in large letters on a front chalkboard. Starters, for the most part, take up the front rows of the little red schoolhouse-type chair/desk combinations. Not surprisingly, linemen usually prefer to flip up the desks, the better to spread out their 300-pound bodies. Reserves fill in behind the starters, and lowly freshmen are forced to find a spot near the back.
That puts them near the booming voice of Hunter, who controls the remote-control clicker like a man who has never once yielded control of the remote to his wife. Graduate assistant Scott Frazier reads from the script of the scrimmage, announcing the call of each play before it is run.
The line watches two versions of every snap -- a straight-ahead view showing the line and offensive backfield and a side view familiar to most television viewers. On most occasions, it's the straight-ahead view that shows blocking breakdowns or gargantuan holes that were missed by the running backs.
It's nothing for Hunter to click band and forth ten times on a single play. He'll find something that disturbs him, run it back and forth multiple times, and suddenly bark, "Jupe, what were you doing on this play?"
It's not just starting left guard Jupiter Wilson who takes criticism. Before the afternoon is over, every individual in the room has been singled out for some transgression or another. One lineman is cited for taking a play off. Another blows an assignment and lets a defender approach the quarterback unimpeded.
"That right there will get you beat," Hunter tells the room after a breakdown. "That right there will get you beat against Miami on Saturday."
The deceptive part of his method is that he can be instructing one player while loading up on another. That leads to comments like, "Willie, you've got to get your feet set here, right?"
But before Willie McNeill can respond, Hunter has moved on. "Jason, get your pads on that guy," he tells center Jason Brown.
Hunter's style is to distribute compliments at least proportionally to the criticism. That's why he can sometimes trick his charges.
"Cincinnati!" he yaps at true freshman Kyle Ralph, who is (surprise) from Cincinnati but apparently has not yet earned the right to be called by his name. Ralph has already been corrected on several aspects of his technique this afternoon, so he is surely expecting the worst, only to hear, "That is a really great job right there. That is great protection."
The only dialogue between players and coach occurs when members of the line explain what audible was called by the quarterback or which assignments were made at the line. For the most part, it is very similar to a Socratic-style classroom, with Hunter firing questions and comments and the assembled players expected to respond.
After almost two hours of breaking down every play of the two-hour scrimmage from multiple angles, Hunter adjourns the meeting simply. The next event on the day's agenda is the afternoon's practice, and he dismisses his linemen to the field with one compact phrase.
"Let's go to work."
Adam Lucas is the publisher of Tar Heel Monthly and can be reached at alucas@tarheelmonthly.com. To subscribe to Tar Heel Monthly, click here.
