UNC football's youth bolsters its offensive line

Coming into the 2016 football season, North Carolina felt good about what it had on the offensive line. 

The Tar Heels lost one senior starter, offensive guard Landon Turner, from the 2015 team. But the plan was to replace him with veteran lineman John Ferranto in what would have been a seamless transition.

But as happens in football, things didn’t go exactly how the coaching staff planned. Over the summer, veteran backup Will Dancy left the program. Then, early in training camp, Ferranto suffered a season-ending injury. And fellow senior starter Caleb Peterson got banged up in the first game against Georgia and had a season-ending back surgery two weeks ago.

“All of the sudden, that’s three seniors,” offensive line coach Chris Kapilovic said. “So you become very young very quickly. So that was not the plan, and not something I wanted to see, but it is what it is.”

The result is a youth movement on the Tar Heel offensive line, to an extent that would have been impossible to predict before training camp started. In a 35-14 win at Virginia on Oct. 22, the Tar Heels started inexperienced junior R.J. Prince at right guard, redshirt first-year Tommy Hatton at left guard and redshirt first-year William Sweet at right tackle.

Senior center Lucas Crowley said at this point, it’s just normal to be dealing with young linemen to his left and right each week.

“It wasn’t tough," he said. "It was just more so that they had to step up immediately. They are young guys, and that’s the way it should be. They should know what they are doing, and they did a good job.”

That's the unique thing about the youth movement — the young backups have done, overall, an excellent job in their new roles. Virginia defensive end Andrew Brown, who Kapilovic said had terrorized every tackle he had faced before the Cavaliers played UNC, was mostly neutralized by Sweet’s play.

Hatton, meanwhile, won both ACC Co-Rookie of the Week and ACC Offensive Lineman of the Week after the Virginia game — and the ACC doesn’t just hand those awards out for free. Crowley said Hatton has an incredibly high football IQ and has done a great job thus far. Kapilovic was also impressed by the first-year.

"He’s as hard a worker and he plays as hard as anybody I’ve coached on game day," Kapilovic said. "He puts everything he has into it. And when you have that, you can get a lot out of somebody.”

Running back Elijah Hood sometimes sees the offensive line's inexperience from his position in the backfield. But he has faith in his line -- even the young guys -- come Saturdays.

“They can all play, they can all get the job done,” he said. “I see them do it at practice, so if they can do it at practice, I know they can do it in the game."

North Carolina didn't expect to and maybe didn't want to play so many young linemen coming into 2016. But after playing well thus far, the players should only improve as the season continues.

@baumanjohn  

sports@dailytarheel.com