University of North Carolina Athletics
Extra Points: 2020 Vision
December 22, 2019 | Football, Extra Points
By Lee Pace
A convoy of busses taking the Carolina football team from Chapel Hill to its hotel in Roanoke on Friday, Oct. 18, was nearing the state line on Hwy. 220 just north of Greensboro shortly after 2 p.m. The players were sleeping, watching movies, playing video games or listening to music as they made their way north for the next day's game at Virginia Tech. Meanwhile, currents of energy flickered among Mack Brown and his coaching staff as they all held their phones close at hand.
Desmond Evans, a five-star defensive end and the most highly recruited player in the state of North Carolina, was holding a ceremony at Lee County High in Sanford to announce his college choice. Brown and lead recruiter Tim Brewster believed the Tar Heels were in the driver's seat, but in the wacky world of recruiting, you never know for certain.
Billy High, Carolina's director of recruiting and at 30 years of age one of the most tech-savvy members of the coaching and administrative staff, was in charge of navigating the on-board WiFi and cellular connections and finding a live video feed of the ceremony that the coaches could watch. He had a group text chain ready to distribute the link when the ceremony started. Brown planned to power up his laptop and watch the ceremony on a bigger screen.
"As luck would have it, we had bad WiFi coverage and things were a little chaotic for a while," says High, who's one year into his job at Carolina after stints at Tennessee and Auburn. "Our feed went down for about five minutes. Here we've got one of the biggest announcements of the year and we can't follow along."
Brown's laptop couldn't find a good connection, so he and Brewster, riding on one bus, sat together and watched on Brewster's cell phone. Jay Bateman and Tim Cross, two coaches on the defensive staff integral to the Evans recruiting campaign, were on another bus. High was on yet another bus with the support staff.
This was serious business indeed. Evans was tabbed by ESPN as the state's top player, the nation's No. 1 defensive end prospect and the nation's No. 2 player overall. Every elite program in the nation was sending coaches to Lee County. Landing a player of Evans' ilk was imperative for the Tar Heels, who had not fielded a true war-daddy rush-end since Robert Quinn and Quinton Coples a decade ago. If Brown was going to make good on his promise to reestablish the deep and productive roots Carolina football enjoyed in the state of North Carolina during his 1988-97 tenure in Chapel Hill, Evans was an essential ingredient of the 2020 class.
Brewster, one of the program's ace recruiters when he worked under Brown in the 1990s, kept a close eye on top prospects around the nation as a whole and North Carolina as well when working for Jimbo Fisher at Florida State from 2013-17 and then one year at Texas A&M. He knew about Evans when he rejoined Brown on the Tar Heel staff in early December 2018 and immediately told Brown he wanted to recruit Sanford and help bring Evans to Chapel Hill. He'd seen tape of Evans. He'd canvassed his contacts in the recruiting world. He finally saw Evans in athletic competition first-hand during a basketball practice in early 2019.
"I just said, 'Lord have mercy.' This guy is the answer, the answer to a lot of goals and objectives," Brewster says. "If you can absolutely rush the passer, great things are going to happen. He has length, athleticism, toughness, a desire to play the game at the highest level. You check every box looking at Desmond Evans.
"When I start recruiting a kid, I ask myself, 'Who does he remind me of?'" Brewster continues. "With Des, two guys immediately came to mind. First was Greg Ellis. Same kind of body, small-town Eastern North Carolina kid. Julius Peppers was the other guy. Greg goes eighth pick in the first round to Dallas. Pep is No. 2 to the Panthers. I see some of both those guys in Des.
"This was a 'must-get' kid. To survive, you've gotta get those kids, the Desmond Evans of the world. My whole mindset was, 'I will not take no for an answer.'"
The coaches finally got their connections to work and watched the announcement ceremony unfold from Sanford. What struck Brewster was that instead of Evans sitting at a table with several hats arrayed in front of him and proud parents and school administrators on the flanks, Evans was in the thick of a swarm of some three dozen Lee County Yellow Jackets in the center of the school's basketball court. As Evans took the microphone to speak to those crammed into the gymnasium, his teammates were smiling, laughing, hopping around, flailing their arms, holding cell phones to record the occasion.
It was clear this was not just Desmond Evans' party. It was theirs as well.
Evans thanked everyone for coming, then unzipped his navy blue Lee County jacket to reveal a Carolina tee shirt. He donned a Tar Heel cap and the mosh pit around him reached a fever pitch.
"He announces for us, and the place goes nuts," Brewster says. "It was so cool that he wanted to share the moment with his team. A lot of these events are not about sharing. Some kids don't know what the word 'sharing' means. That to me said worlds about what kind of person we're getting in Des."
Brown and Brewster exchanged high-fives and hugs riding up on Bus No. 1.
"This is huge," Brown says. "Since we've been here, we've flipped a few good ones and then when the No. 1 guy comes, it sends a message to the 2021 class: 'It's okay to come here. You can come with us.' We're starting to get a lot better."
Within 30 seconds of Evans' announcement, a text message comes through on Brewster's phone. It's from Julius Peppers, who's in Los Angeles on business and has an interest in Evans as he met Evans at a Tar Heel practice earlier in the year.
"Pep is a huge Tar Heel fan," Brewster says. "He was tickled to see us get some great news."
The defensive coaches on Bus No. 2 are certainly delighted with Evans' commitment as well. Cross considers the array of colorful photos of ex-Tar Heel defensive linemen and NFL greats like Peppers, Ellis and Vonnie Holliday mounted in the first-floor hallway of Kenan Football Center. He lumps Evans with four other D-line members of the 2020 signing class (A.J. Beatty, Kedrick Bingley-Jones, Myles Murphy and Clyde Pinder Jr.) and says, "These new guys look just like those guys in the hallway," he says, then adds specifically about Evans: "He's a dynamic pass-rusher. He's just what the doctor ordered for us."
These linemen grouped with six other defensive signees give Bateman reason to smile. For 2020, some of these newcomers will contribute, and they'll join a unit that will benefit from the addition of a half dozen defensive backs available after a 2019 season of either post-transfer ineligibility or injury.
"I think another year of watching film and not having to learn an entirely new defense, to now focus on their jobs and the small things that go along with playing, will help a ton," says Bateman. "We've got an awesome future. We got better with this class.
"This state for whatever reason has always had great D-linemen. We started working on this class as soon as we got here. We started watching tape and got out on the road and realized how special the kids in this state were. We were excited to get Des. These other kids are in the same conversation."
Evans is the touchstone of the Tar Heels' 2020 signing class—an excellent collection ranked in the nation's top 20, heavy with linemen and accented with a quarterback from Arkansas and some taller receivers and tight ends than have populated recent rosters. The class numbers 25 players with 14 of them coming from the state of North Carolina. That's the first time since the 2011 signing class that included in-state plums Eric Ebron, Marquise Williams and Romar Morris that a Tar Heel class has had more than 50 percent homegrown players. Twelve of the 25 will enroll in January.
"This is a great step for our program," Brown says. "It's well-rounded but heavy with linemen. We've really improved ourselves around the line of scrimmage. We've done what we said we'd do: Go heavy in-state and then go out-of-state for a few great players."
One year ago, the Tar Heels staged a monster recruiting coup by prying QB Sam Howell from the clutches of Florida State. That paid off immediately with Howell winning the starting quarterback job and passing for 3,347 yards and 35 touchdowns, the most in FBS history for a true freshman. They built on that transition class over the course of 2019 by riding Brown's engaging personality and attention to detail; an energetic and aggressive recruiting staff; multiple facility enhancements; and enough on-field success with six wins and bowl eligibility to prove every element of the program's on an upward trajectory.
"We had some kids last spring tell us, 'I'm interested, but let's see how you do,'" Brown says. "They came back when they saw all the full houses we had and the wins and the close games. By then, we didn't have room for them. They were saying, 'I want to be a part of that.' The 2021 class will be easier than this one. We've ticked all the boxes."
Bateman has recruited North Carolina nearly all of his coaching career, including living in Burlington for five years coaching at Elon and then cherry-picking the kind of young men who'd be interested in playing at Army West Point. He knows the state intimately.
"I felt like every kid I ever recruited here was a Carolina fan," Bateman says. "It's the state university. Kids who grow up in this state, Carolina is who they pull for. It's not a good school, it's a great school. People in this state know that. Coach Brown gave us the rally cry that we've got to dominate this state. We've got a great school and a Hall of Fame coach. That opened doors everywhere. Every year this state is going to provide a really strong nucleus of kids to work from."
"The school is an easy sell," adds offensive coordinator and QB coach Phil Longo. "Anywhere you go, people recognize the color and the name. We have great academics. We have a great location. Any skill player would love this offense. Then you have Mack Brown. Are you kidding? It's not that hard."
The staff proved that with these 25 players. That they did so with Evans and a host of other highly-coveted players bodes well. Ergo all the energy on the busses headed north back in October.
Institutions and coaches are prohibited per NCAA rules from mentioning recruits by name and disseminating any publicity prior to the prospect signing his Letter of Intent. But that doesn't prohibit a coach from posting a veiled message on social media. Which is why Tim Brewster as things quietened down somewhere near Martinsville sat back and typed onto his Twitter feed: "Coach Brown and I sitting on this bus heading to Va Tech .... smiling from ear to ear!!"
Sadly the Tar Heels lost the next day to Virginia Tech in six overtimes. But there's a seat on the bus for Desmond Evans and two dozen more new Tar Heels when Carolina makes the same trek in 2021.
Chapel Hill writer Lee Pace (UNC '79) is in his 30th year writing "Extra Points" and 16th reporting from the sidelines for the Tar Heel Sports Network. Follow him @LeePaceTweet and email him at leepace7@gmail.com.
A convoy of busses taking the Carolina football team from Chapel Hill to its hotel in Roanoke on Friday, Oct. 18, was nearing the state line on Hwy. 220 just north of Greensboro shortly after 2 p.m. The players were sleeping, watching movies, playing video games or listening to music as they made their way north for the next day's game at Virginia Tech. Meanwhile, currents of energy flickered among Mack Brown and his coaching staff as they all held their phones close at hand.
Desmond Evans, a five-star defensive end and the most highly recruited player in the state of North Carolina, was holding a ceremony at Lee County High in Sanford to announce his college choice. Brown and lead recruiter Tim Brewster believed the Tar Heels were in the driver's seat, but in the wacky world of recruiting, you never know for certain.
Billy High, Carolina's director of recruiting and at 30 years of age one of the most tech-savvy members of the coaching and administrative staff, was in charge of navigating the on-board WiFi and cellular connections and finding a live video feed of the ceremony that the coaches could watch. He had a group text chain ready to distribute the link when the ceremony started. Brown planned to power up his laptop and watch the ceremony on a bigger screen.
"As luck would have it, we had bad WiFi coverage and things were a little chaotic for a while," says High, who's one year into his job at Carolina after stints at Tennessee and Auburn. "Our feed went down for about five minutes. Here we've got one of the biggest announcements of the year and we can't follow along."
Brown's laptop couldn't find a good connection, so he and Brewster, riding on one bus, sat together and watched on Brewster's cell phone. Jay Bateman and Tim Cross, two coaches on the defensive staff integral to the Evans recruiting campaign, were on another bus. High was on yet another bus with the support staff.
This was serious business indeed. Evans was tabbed by ESPN as the state's top player, the nation's No. 1 defensive end prospect and the nation's No. 2 player overall. Every elite program in the nation was sending coaches to Lee County. Landing a player of Evans' ilk was imperative for the Tar Heels, who had not fielded a true war-daddy rush-end since Robert Quinn and Quinton Coples a decade ago. If Brown was going to make good on his promise to reestablish the deep and productive roots Carolina football enjoyed in the state of North Carolina during his 1988-97 tenure in Chapel Hill, Evans was an essential ingredient of the 2020 class.
Brewster, one of the program's ace recruiters when he worked under Brown in the 1990s, kept a close eye on top prospects around the nation as a whole and North Carolina as well when working for Jimbo Fisher at Florida State from 2013-17 and then one year at Texas A&M. He knew about Evans when he rejoined Brown on the Tar Heel staff in early December 2018 and immediately told Brown he wanted to recruit Sanford and help bring Evans to Chapel Hill. He'd seen tape of Evans. He'd canvassed his contacts in the recruiting world. He finally saw Evans in athletic competition first-hand during a basketball practice in early 2019.
"I just said, 'Lord have mercy.' This guy is the answer, the answer to a lot of goals and objectives," Brewster says. "If you can absolutely rush the passer, great things are going to happen. He has length, athleticism, toughness, a desire to play the game at the highest level. You check every box looking at Desmond Evans.
"When I start recruiting a kid, I ask myself, 'Who does he remind me of?'" Brewster continues. "With Des, two guys immediately came to mind. First was Greg Ellis. Same kind of body, small-town Eastern North Carolina kid. Julius Peppers was the other guy. Greg goes eighth pick in the first round to Dallas. Pep is No. 2 to the Panthers. I see some of both those guys in Des.
"This was a 'must-get' kid. To survive, you've gotta get those kids, the Desmond Evans of the world. My whole mindset was, 'I will not take no for an answer.'"
The coaches finally got their connections to work and watched the announcement ceremony unfold from Sanford. What struck Brewster was that instead of Evans sitting at a table with several hats arrayed in front of him and proud parents and school administrators on the flanks, Evans was in the thick of a swarm of some three dozen Lee County Yellow Jackets in the center of the school's basketball court. As Evans took the microphone to speak to those crammed into the gymnasium, his teammates were smiling, laughing, hopping around, flailing their arms, holding cell phones to record the occasion.
It was clear this was not just Desmond Evans' party. It was theirs as well.
Evans thanked everyone for coming, then unzipped his navy blue Lee County jacket to reveal a Carolina tee shirt. He donned a Tar Heel cap and the mosh pit around him reached a fever pitch.
"He announces for us, and the place goes nuts," Brewster says. "It was so cool that he wanted to share the moment with his team. A lot of these events are not about sharing. Some kids don't know what the word 'sharing' means. That to me said worlds about what kind of person we're getting in Des."
Brown and Brewster exchanged high-fives and hugs riding up on Bus No. 1.
"This is huge," Brown says. "Since we've been here, we've flipped a few good ones and then when the No. 1 guy comes, it sends a message to the 2021 class: 'It's okay to come here. You can come with us.' We're starting to get a lot better."
Within 30 seconds of Evans' announcement, a text message comes through on Brewster's phone. It's from Julius Peppers, who's in Los Angeles on business and has an interest in Evans as he met Evans at a Tar Heel practice earlier in the year.
"Pep is a huge Tar Heel fan," Brewster says. "He was tickled to see us get some great news."
The defensive coaches on Bus No. 2 are certainly delighted with Evans' commitment as well. Cross considers the array of colorful photos of ex-Tar Heel defensive linemen and NFL greats like Peppers, Ellis and Vonnie Holliday mounted in the first-floor hallway of Kenan Football Center. He lumps Evans with four other D-line members of the 2020 signing class (A.J. Beatty, Kedrick Bingley-Jones, Myles Murphy and Clyde Pinder Jr.) and says, "These new guys look just like those guys in the hallway," he says, then adds specifically about Evans: "He's a dynamic pass-rusher. He's just what the doctor ordered for us."
These linemen grouped with six other defensive signees give Bateman reason to smile. For 2020, some of these newcomers will contribute, and they'll join a unit that will benefit from the addition of a half dozen defensive backs available after a 2019 season of either post-transfer ineligibility or injury.
"I think another year of watching film and not having to learn an entirely new defense, to now focus on their jobs and the small things that go along with playing, will help a ton," says Bateman. "We've got an awesome future. We got better with this class.
"This state for whatever reason has always had great D-linemen. We started working on this class as soon as we got here. We started watching tape and got out on the road and realized how special the kids in this state were. We were excited to get Des. These other kids are in the same conversation."
Evans is the touchstone of the Tar Heels' 2020 signing class—an excellent collection ranked in the nation's top 20, heavy with linemen and accented with a quarterback from Arkansas and some taller receivers and tight ends than have populated recent rosters. The class numbers 25 players with 14 of them coming from the state of North Carolina. That's the first time since the 2011 signing class that included in-state plums Eric Ebron, Marquise Williams and Romar Morris that a Tar Heel class has had more than 50 percent homegrown players. Twelve of the 25 will enroll in January.
"This is a great step for our program," Brown says. "It's well-rounded but heavy with linemen. We've really improved ourselves around the line of scrimmage. We've done what we said we'd do: Go heavy in-state and then go out-of-state for a few great players."
One year ago, the Tar Heels staged a monster recruiting coup by prying QB Sam Howell from the clutches of Florida State. That paid off immediately with Howell winning the starting quarterback job and passing for 3,347 yards and 35 touchdowns, the most in FBS history for a true freshman. They built on that transition class over the course of 2019 by riding Brown's engaging personality and attention to detail; an energetic and aggressive recruiting staff; multiple facility enhancements; and enough on-field success with six wins and bowl eligibility to prove every element of the program's on an upward trajectory.
"We had some kids last spring tell us, 'I'm interested, but let's see how you do,'" Brown says. "They came back when they saw all the full houses we had and the wins and the close games. By then, we didn't have room for them. They were saying, 'I want to be a part of that.' The 2021 class will be easier than this one. We've ticked all the boxes."
Bateman has recruited North Carolina nearly all of his coaching career, including living in Burlington for five years coaching at Elon and then cherry-picking the kind of young men who'd be interested in playing at Army West Point. He knows the state intimately.
"I felt like every kid I ever recruited here was a Carolina fan," Bateman says. "It's the state university. Kids who grow up in this state, Carolina is who they pull for. It's not a good school, it's a great school. People in this state know that. Coach Brown gave us the rally cry that we've got to dominate this state. We've got a great school and a Hall of Fame coach. That opened doors everywhere. Every year this state is going to provide a really strong nucleus of kids to work from."
"The school is an easy sell," adds offensive coordinator and QB coach Phil Longo. "Anywhere you go, people recognize the color and the name. We have great academics. We have a great location. Any skill player would love this offense. Then you have Mack Brown. Are you kidding? It's not that hard."
The staff proved that with these 25 players. That they did so with Evans and a host of other highly-coveted players bodes well. Ergo all the energy on the busses headed north back in October.
Institutions and coaches are prohibited per NCAA rules from mentioning recruits by name and disseminating any publicity prior to the prospect signing his Letter of Intent. But that doesn't prohibit a coach from posting a veiled message on social media. Which is why Tim Brewster as things quietened down somewhere near Martinsville sat back and typed onto his Twitter feed: "Coach Brown and I sitting on this bus heading to Va Tech .... smiling from ear to ear!!"
Sadly the Tar Heels lost the next day to Virginia Tech in six overtimes. But there's a seat on the bus for Desmond Evans and two dozen more new Tar Heels when Carolina makes the same trek in 2021.
Chapel Hill writer Lee Pace (UNC '79) is in his 30th year writing "Extra Points" and 16th reporting from the sidelines for the Tar Heel Sports Network. Follow him @LeePaceTweet and email him at leepace7@gmail.com.
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