Russell Bodine played for the North Carolina football team from 2011-13 as an interior offensive lineman. In 2013, his redshirt junior season, Bodine was an All-ACC honorable mention and consistently graded out as one of UNC’s top linemen.
Bodine was selected by the Cincinnati Bengals in the fourth round of the 2014 NFL Draft, and has played every offensive snap for his team over the past two seasons.
Sports Editor Jeremy Vernon spoke to Bodine about his transition from UNC to the NFL, his thoughts on former teammate Giovani Bernard and his decision to leave school early.
The Daily Tar Heel: This will be your third year in the league. How do you think you have transitioned from college?
Russell Bodine: I think the biggest thing for me has been learning terminology and kind of the stuff you’re gonna see, because when we were there under Fedora, it doesn’t really, not to knock it, but it’s different. Going from that spread offense back to the pro-style offense and all the mike points and all that stuff, that’s really been the biggest adjustment. And I think the crazy thing about the NFL is it’s so much technique. You can’t get away — you’re not gonna out-muscle anybody. Everybody’s such good athletes that you really have to rely on that technique to be successful.
DTH: You have a former teammate in the backfield in Gio Bernard. Has he done some of the same things in the pros that you saw him do in college?
RB: Gio’s a great player. I mean he’s one of those guys that kind of — sometimes I joke around that he’s so small that he disappears behind us, and we did the same thing in college. He kind of fits through those little creases that maybe some other guys wouldn’t fit through, and he runs the ball just as hard as anybody in the league. And he did the same thing when he was (at UNC), and it’s kind of fun to watch him, because you never really know exactly what’s going to happen.
DTH: You were at North Carolina when the details of the athletic-academic scandal were coming out. What was it like going through that?
RB: I kind of showed up when it kind of went crazy. I don’t know anything about it to be completely honest. I wasn’t really involved in any of it. It obviously was a little difficult to come in and have three head coaches — you know we had Butch (Davis) for one year and then I think they fired Butch seven or 10 days before training camp. That was a little frustrating, but Everett (Withers) stepped up and did a good job and then we got Fedora. So that was a little weird as far as it made the football aspect a little more difficult, just some coaching transitions and all that. But as far as your day-to-day life, I don’t think it changed a whole lot. I think we maybe make a bigger deal out of it than it really is.
