University of North Carolina Athletics
Football Notebook
September 14, 2010 | Football
Sept. 14, 2010
By Lauren Brownlow
Shaun Draughn missed the LSU game as one of the six questionable players and was recently cleared by the NCAA. His role is still unknown but it will help to have the senior running back in the offense. "There's been a period of time over the last couple of weeks where, because of the question of if and when he would be available, some of his roles during practice have been significantly minimized," Butch Davis said.
Davis said that the team spent last Tuesday and Wednesday concentrating on themselves and then turned to Georgia Tech late Wednesday/early Thursday. The scout team has been running the tricky offense and while A.J. Blue would have been the ideal choice to play Josh Nesbitt, he is still rehabbing last year's torn ACL. Mywan Jackson played that role last season, but he is still coming off of a concussion. So freshmen wide receivers Reggie Wilkins and Sean Tapley have been filling in.
Still, the real challenge of defending this offense lies with the look the scout-team offensive line is able to replicate. The way that they block is unique, and senior linebacker Bruce Carter said that's one of the toughest things to adjust to when you first face that offense. "After you get that first play underneath your belt, because they do a lot of cutting and what not so once you get used to that, the game will kind of settle down. You'll be able to read stuff, be disciplined and learn to react," Carter said.
Kareem Martin and Tim Jackson are two freshman defensive ends listed on the two-deep; Martin is a starter. They both played against LSU but learning to defend the Georgia Tech offense will be very difficult. "One thing that's really good about them, they're very smart kids. They're going to learn. They're going to watch. They absorb the practices that we've set up and the drills, they relate that real quickly," Davis said. "They're pretty fast studies. ... They'll do fine. I'm encouraged by both of those kids."
Georgia Tech has had issues passing this season, completing just 7-of-23. Davis insisted that although their passing game has sputtered without star wideout Demaryius Thomas, that doesn't mean it's not a threat. "I think that they're probably like anybody - when you lose a great player, you're in a transition period," Davis said. "We found that out last year, that you lose a Hakeem Nicks and a Brandon Tate and all those guys. There is somebody waiting in the wings to be the next guy."
Georgia Tech may have lost some key players this off-season, but the coaching staff gained a defensive coordinator in former Virginia head coach Al Groh. His 3-4 defense has given Carolina a myriad of problems offensively in recent years. T.J. Yates called last year's Virginia game, which featured 174 total yards and nine first downs, a "perfect storm of horribleness."
The Tar Heels were watching Virginia film to help prepare for this 3-4 and have now integrated the new Georgia Tech film, but there are still just two games to study. "It's different personnel, so they run different blitzes and a couple of different coverages. But overall, it's the same scheme," Yates said. "It's a struggle when we only have two games of just that Georgia Tech film on the film, just to get it personnel-wise. But I think we've got the basic scheme down."
Lauren Brownlow is the executive editor of Tar Heel Monthly.
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