Extra Points: Daybreak

Extra Points: Daybreak

By Lee Pace

Those 99 days since the Tar Heels last played football might as well have been in another century for all their relevance to Sunday afternoon's dawning of spring practice. The new chancellor was there. The band and cheerleaders christened the proceedings with some pomp and circumstance. There were aging lettermen and fresh-faced high school prospects dotting the landscape, and the media was given a wide berth over two hours to document the action. And there was a silver-haired coach back on the practice field in an official capacity for the first time in five years.

March 3 couldn't have come soon enough.

"During meetings earlier today I was antsy, scratching at my desk, I couldn't wait to come out onto the field," cornerback Patrice Rene said. "It had been a long time coming. New team, new coaching staff, let's get the ball rolling in a different direction. I couldn't wait."

"It was awesome," running back Michael Carter added. "I'm so excited. I love working out, I love working every day to get better, but my passion is football. Being out here with helmets on, cleats on, running plays, competing, that's me. I'm just excited."

Mack Brown admitted to being "antsy" on Saturday night and showing up for work on Sunday before anyone else had arrived in Kenan Football Center.

"Forty-two years of your life, this is what you've done," Brown said. "I didn't even realize how much I was going to miss it the five years I was out. Today made me understand this is what I need to be doing and especially here, a perfect spot for me and Sally. I am so blessed to be back."

The Marching Tar Heels played The Tag at precisely 3 p.m. in the sparkling new Indoor Practice Facility, and then the team and staff gathered around Kevin Guskiewicz, who was named interim chancellor of the Chapel Hill campus just under a month ago. Guskiewicz asked for an opportunity to talk to the squad, and Brown suggested the first day of spring ball.

Guskiewicz has a vast curriculum vitae in athletics, having been a trainer and a nationally recognized expert on concussions and neurological issues related to sport. He told the Tar Heels he loved the game of football dating to his boyhood in Latrobe, Pa.—"The home of pro football," he said, referencing a game in 1892 when one player received $500 for scoring a touchdown and thus became the first "professional." Guskiewicz said he would visit often, that his relationship with Brown extended back to 1995, when he joined the Carolina faculty of Exercise and Sport Science. The chancellor told the players why he believed in the value of football, that it was germane to developing lifelong skills of hard work, discipline and teamwork.

"He also told them how important the game and the program were to him and this campus," Brown said. "It was a nice way to start things off."

Several personnel changes from 2018 were notable, including former quarterback Chazz Surratt moving to linebacker and wholesale machinations along the offensive line—senior tackle Charlie Heck moving from right tackle to left; Nick Polino and J.J. McCargo, the left guard and center last fall, respectively, flipping positions as McCargo works through an injury that makes it difficult for him to snap; and the right side now being manned by a pair of mammoth sophomores, William Barnes at guard and Jordan Tucker at tackle.

Surratt is now wearing No. 4, given that his number on offense, 12, is the domain of Tomon Fox on defense. Brown made it clear that Surratt was planning to move to defense even before a coaching change was made in late November, and given that he weighs 225 pounds, linebacker was the better choice over safety.

"Your quarterback's usually your best athlete in high school," Brown said. "A lot of those guys played defensive back, wide receiver, running back. For whatever reason, it didn't work for Chazz at quarterback. He runs really good and he's smart. He obviously knows schemes because he was a quarterback. So he's really excited about this."

Carolina has three quarterbacks—each of them freshmen. Cade Fortin and Jace Ruder played enough last fall to show promise with their throwing and running skills but not enough to surrender a year of eligibility, so both are redshirt freshmen. They're joined by January enrollee Sam Howell, a highly touted prospect who opted for the Tar Heels over Florida State on National Signing Day in December.

"All three looked good, I didn't see a lot of separation in the first day," Brown said. "All three are learning the offense. All three can throw and they can run and they looked a lot alike in the first day."

The Tar Heels under new offensive coordinator Phil Longo will run the Air Raid attack, which was originally developed by Hal Mumme and further popularized when Mike Leach took it from Kentucky, were he was offensive coordinator under Mumme in the 1990s, to Oklahoma, then to Texas Tech, and now at Washington State as head coach.

"The Air Raid will be wide open, but there will definitely be a physical, downhill run element to it," said Longo, whose offenses at Sam Houston State in 2014 and '15 each rushed for more than 3,700 yards. "We will be able to run the ball efficiently. We will have the ability to run and throw the ball and take whatever the defense gives you."

Brown got a steady diet of seeing the Air Raid at Texas while going against Leach's attacks while at OU and then Texas Tech.

"It was a very difficult offense to defend as long as you can run the ball," Brown said. "When you weren't running the ball, it was a pass offense, and when you stopped the screens and short passes and forced them to throw it deep, you had a better chance to win. When it's really a balanced offense and you're really good at both phases and you can emphasize one or the other, it's very, very hard to stop."

First-year defensive co-coordinator Jay Bateman has more challenges on his side of the ball given that the Tar Heels lose four important defensive linemen and linebacker Cole Holcomb and need to find a cornerback to anchor the side opposite Rene.

"Our defense will be a multiple defense that will be very aggressive," Brown said. "I have really been impressed with Jay and all he brings. He's not a guy who's locked into one thing. He's had to take players at Army, some of them who were undersized, and do a lot of different things to try to work against some of the better offenses in the country. He's been able to do a magnificent job getting the right players in the right place."

"We're going to try and solve our problems with aggression and make people defend us as much as we try to defend them," Bateman said. "We had talented players at Army. They were maybe not as long or as fast or as big, and you maybe had to coach with a little more detail. Fundamentally, they had to be really, really good and had to play really, really hard."

One snippet of good news on defense is that Aaron Crawford returns for his senior year after missing all of 2018 with an injury. Crawford at 6-1, 310 pounds brings an immense presence inside along with extraordinary strength and toughness. He was poised for a breakout year last fall until getting hurt in preseason.

"Last year was definitely the most frustrating part of my career," he said. "There were parts of the season I thought I could come back, and frankly I was ready to go. I was ready to play, but my body said 'No.' Now I'm re-focused, I had lot of time off this winter. I've gotten my body back right, I feel healthy, I feel ready to go."

That in a microcosm is Carolina football, spring 2019—the darkness of last fall existing only as motivation for kick-off in Charlotte on Labor Day weekend.

"If you live in the past, you're going to get left there," Carter said. "Two-and-nine, three-and-nine, even the eleven-win season. That's all in the past. We're zero-and-zero. We're new guys, we have new breath, we're ready to go."

The practice ended 150 minutes after it started with a game-winning field goal try by Noah Ruggles, who redshirted last year as Freeman Jones finished his career. As he did during his first decade at Carolina from 1988-97, Brown ordered the entire squad onto the playing field to cluster around the field-goal team, make noise and flail arms and wield insults at the kicker.

But Ruggles shucked off the distractions, made clean contact and nailed the kick through the uprights. Apropos, it seemed, on so many levels.

Chapel Hill writer and Carolina graduate Lee Pace '79 has written "Extra Points" since 1990 and been the sideline reporter for the Tar Heel Sports Network since 2004. Follow him @LeePaceTweet and write him at leepace7@gmail.com

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University of North Carolina Athletics

Players Mentioned

Michael Carter

Aaron Crawford

Tomon Fox

Charlie Heck

Cole Holcomb

Freeman Jones

Nick Polino

Patrice Rene

Jace Ruder

Noah Ruggles

Chazz Surratt

Jordan Tucker

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