Extra Points: New Normal

By Lee Pace

Tuesday would be Day 10 of Carolina's 2020 spring practice season. By now, Mack Brown and his assistant coaches would have drawn a bead on which of 13 January enrollees might find immediate niches on the Tar Heel squad come September. They would have an idea who along the defensive front would replace Aaron Crawford and Jason Strowbridge. The Athletic Department marketing and game management staffs would be well into preparations for the Blue-White Game on April 18 and rolling out a new pre-game venue around the Bell Tower for music, food and games.

Instead, crickets.

Today, Brown is ensconced in his Chapel Hill home running hours and hours worth of virtual meetings daily and working his phone via voice calls and text messages to a myriad of constituencies (University administrators, football staff, players, boosters, media, doctors, ad infinitum).

Sam Howell is throwing passes to Dyami Brown on a football field in Charlotte. Patrice Rene is in Ottawa, Canada, rehabbing his knee via HIIT sessions (high intensity interval training) and consultations with the training staff via the Zoom app; he even attended a "virtual" funeral via for an uncle in New York who died from the virus. Beau Corrales is in Georgetown, Texas, catching balls thrown by the local high school quarterback, sweating to the conditioning protocols prescribed by Tar Heel strength coach Brian Hess and even working some yoga into his routine.

The coaching staff is scattered from Nebraska to Ohio (the homes of incoming coaches Jovan Dewitt and John Lilly at their previous jobs) to a lake in Alabama (O-line coach Stacy Searels' vacation home). They keep themselves busy by talking to recruits via text and phone calls (incoming from the prospects only during this juncture of the recruiting calendar) and having Zoom meetings with their respective position groups. The coaches have been doing frequent virtual clinics with high school coaches; cornerbacks coach Drè Bly, for example, presided last week over an online convergence of more than 100 coaches in the Tidewater area in Virginia—Bly's boyhood home and today a prime recruiting territory.

"You have to be creative and take advantage of this time," Bly says. "I'm meeting with coaches from home on my i-Pad. Honestly, when we're through with this, I think we'll do more from video and realize you don't have to be present to get what you need done."

And the strength coaches, trainers, equipment staff, dieticians and all the others in support and administrative roles are sending packages out to players ranging from meal checks to exercise bands to footballs if a quarterback needs a good one for practice.

It's all in a day's work in the new normal of Tar Heel football.

"We've had three difficult and challenging weeks trying to make sure our players are safe, all have a place to stay, have their scholarship checks for their meals, a place with good internet so they can take classes and communicate with us, a place to work out and do their conditioning drills," Brown says of the period since March 11-12 when wholesale changes to everyday life began falling in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic.

"We're trying to do everything within our capability to teach a new routine. We're all creatures of routines, and those are now out the window. I heard a doctor say the other day, 'We're all in a state of mourning.' He explained we've all had fun things taken from us. We're all sad we can't do what we want to do. So I've got to be the one to pick everyone up."

The coaches and social media staff have kept the program in the public consciousness with April Fools tweets about Kenan Stadium going to Carolina blue turf or a "GIF" of offensive coordinator Phil Longo driving a convertible with a smile on his face after some good recruiting news. Searels and receivers coach Lonnie Galloway joined their respective families in producing entertaining dance videos on the TikTok social media app. Carolina football ranked 13th on Instagram and 16th on Twitter in engagement over the month of March. And Brown was active last Thursday doing media interviews and social media posts before, during and after an ESPN prime-time replay of his Texas Longhorns' win over USC in the 2006 Rose Bowl.

"That was a great message for our current players and a great message for our recruits," Brown says. "We are one of the few coaching staffs to have won a national title, we know how to do it and we'd like to do it again. Thirty-three of those kids went on to play in the NFL, so that tells recruits we either know who to recruit or we can develop them—one of the two or, I'd like to think, both."

"People don't have spring football to talk about. So we have to be creative and make sure we're still relevant."

Head trainer Luke Ross estimates around a third of the 100-plus players on the team are having Zoom meetings multiple times per week to discuss rehab programs and/or actually go through exercises with the remote supervision and direction from Ross himself or one of his three full-time trainers or two graduate assistants.

"We're also in contact with every member of the team on a weekly basis," Ross says. "What do you need? Any new injuries we should know about? We are also vigilant for signs of depression, anxiety, family issues that may have nothing to do with the virus. All the guys have access to the mental-health resources at the University that can be done virtually."

As soon as players were told March 13 that all spring sports activities had been cancelled around the ACC, the equipment staff dispatched footballs to quarterbacks and kickers who needed them, each cataloged for compliance issues and to be returned when life returns to normal. The nutrition staff sent supplement powders and nutrition bars to scholarship players only (a compliance issue). The trainers sent stretching and rehab bands.

"The team as a whole has embraced these challenges," Ross says. "For the guys in an injury rehab program, we ask if they have access to a gym, access to a physical therapy clinic. Jahlil Taylor, fortunately, has access to P.T. at his home in Georgia. Some of the other guys might have one nearby, but it's closed. Everyone's a little different. We go on a case-by-case basis."

One major concern from Brown on down the staff totem poll is players getting out of the team cocoon where study halls, weight-lifting and diets are monitored daily. Food intake is a significant issue. Does a player have access to enough nutritious food without falling prey to a steady diet of fast food or sugary snacks? Fortunately, the Tar Heels have been well-educated on their individual nutrition needs, each player having to pass a "plate test" from nutritionist Kelsee Gomes and her staff in the team dining hall. A player goes through the line, fills his plate and then shows it to the nutritionist for feedback.

"We sent out about 90 care boxes, all of them customized for the player's individual needs," Gomes says. "Some were for post-surgical issues. Other boxes were congruent with their lean-out or weight-gain goals based on position. We sent supplements to certain players recovering from joint/ligament issues, supplements for certain players more prone to bone injury.

"We also do weekly team talks that we send to the guys via the Teamworks app, and we do customized, one-on-one sessions on their specific goals through text, Zoom or Facetime. It's definitely a busy time."

The players have settled into their individual regimens of online classes, study, workouts, football-specific drills and Zoom meetings with teammates and coaches.

Howell, the Tar Heels' record-setting quarterback as a freshman last year, and Brown, the talented wide receiver, are part of a core group of guys who meet in Charlotte to throw and catch. Former Duke and current New York Giants QB Daniel Jones and current Wake Forest quarterback Sam Hartman are regulars, as is Anthony Boone, the former Duke player who's been Howell's passing coach the last five years. Howell's among the players taking the lead in motivating his teammates via Zoom, texts or personal phone calls to stay the course.

"I know what it takes to be successful," Howell says. "The thing for me is I'm just trying to be a good leader and make sure I'm holding people accountable. This is really a time that teams that want to be great can separate themselves. There are a lot of teams that will take it easy during this time and try to enjoy the time off. We're not doing that. We're trying to make the most of the time we have."

"We have a lot of group chats," adds Rene. "We have one group with just 'Rude Boys' (defensive backs). Another group of 30 or 40 random guys. We talk about anything. We're a really close team. We've always had a great family culture. The communication has been really strong since we've been scattered about."

Some players don't have access to a gym, training facility or even a garage workout facility, so Hess and the strength coaches have prescribed how players can take a back-pack and customize it with heavy items and get in a full workout. Corrales is fortunate in that some long-time friends have loaned him access to their in-home workout room that has most anything he needs.

"I'm grateful to have friends who've been generous to me to let me use their stuff," Corrales says. "I'm doing the regular stuff with the team, then in the afternoon will do some receiver-specific work. I've also been doing on-line yoga. It's helped me a lot. I can definitely use some help with my mobility and flexibility."

Each Tar Heel is dealing in his own way with this tsunami of change. There was the excitement of going into spring ball set to open on March 17 ... followed by the cancellation of the spring semester … evolving into acceptance of an odd new existence.

"Our team morale was high going into spring," Corrales says. "Everyone was hyped to get back on the field. We were eager for it. It's been a big letdown. But all the guys have good heads on their shoulders. They know we have to take advantage of this time if we want to have the kind of season we expect. Not many other teams are doing what we're doing now."

Brown's mantra passed down through the staff and team is that, despite the misery, death and business carnage being propagated by the coronavirus, there'll be some positives to evolve from it, and everyone will learn valuable lessons about coping with a worldwide challenge not seen since the Spanish Flu Pandemic just over a century ago.

"I'm trying to make the best of the situation," says Longo, who's bivouacked with this wife and four young children in their home just outside Chapel Hill. "That's what I'm telling our players. I can't affect the virus. I might as well make the most of it. I have more time to game-plan, more time to spend with my kids, and you can never have enough of that. I have more time with my wife. I have more time to work out."

The sport of boxing has been an important part of Longo's life dating to high school in New Jersey, and throughout three decades of coaching, he's carved out 45 to 60 minutes daily to pound a heavy bag. Those sessions begin at 4:30 a.m. during the quarantine just as they did before. But now once he takes the gloves off and showers, everything else about his day has changed, most notably having the face-to-face connection and interaction with his players and fellow coaches.

He longs for the day when he can get back to playfully jabbing his guys in the ribs.

"It's kind of how I say 'Hello,'" Longo says. "I'll be talking to Lonnie Galloway on Zoom and I have the urge to go give him a shot in the ribs. I would do that every day. Now, we have interaction, but it's not the same not being in person. I can't wait to get everyone back in the building and go to work."

Chapel Hill writer Lee Pace (UNC '79) is in his 31th year writing "Extra Points" and 17th reporting from the sidelines for the Tar Heel Sports Network. Follow him @LeePaceTweet and email him at leepace7@gmail.com.

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University of North Carolina Athletics

Players Mentioned

Dyami Brown

Beau Corrales

Aaron Crawford

Sam Howell

Patrice Rene

Jason Strowbridge

Jahlil Taylor

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