Without spring ball, UNC football misses chance to evaluate players in offseason

With all athletic activities canceled for the foreseeable future, the North Carolina football team is missing out on much of its spring. Players are at home, meeting with the coaching staff through Zoom several times a week but unable to practice together.

UNC will likely weather the challenge better than many college programs, though, with the team returning most of its offensive talent and not changing any major concepts around quarterback Sam Howell. 

"We've got 35 coaches coming back on top of the four coaches that I have full time, because we've got 35 veteran players coming back that know the offense," offensive coordinator Phil Longo said Monday during a Zoom press conference. 

"So when our young guys, the 25 new young guys that come in, turn around at the back of the line at a drill or something that we're doing, I've got a whole slew of receivers or linemen or running backs that can teach them, because they already know it." 

Longo had originally moved the 15-day spring practice to a 10-day mini session in June but now believes nothing is going to happen in June at all. With that, the knowledge most players already have will be paramount. 

The silver lining for the Tar Heels is that Longo's Air Raid offense uses just 28 basic concepts. The emphasis is to get players to a point where they can play instinctively and run plays at rapid speed. 

One bigger downside, though, is that the North Carolina coaches won't be able to judge their newcomers in a live setting until the fall. 

"Those are the ones that I think are being cheated the most by this process," Longo said.
"And those are the ones I think I spend the most time communicating with and, as a staff, we spend the most time talking about." 

Longo noted that Howell himself was one of the main beneficiaries of spring ball last year — the true first-year was eventually named the Tar Heels' starting quarterback shortly before the first game of the season last year, then established himself as one of the best quarterbacks in the ACC. 

And on the flip side, spring training gives the coaching staff an opportunity to see whether some of its highly-touted recruits still need more seasoning before being trusted in a game. 

"We all know (incoming first-year wide receiver) Josh Downs, athletically, is probably good enough to play for us right now," Longo said. "But he still has to put pads on and prove that, and spring ball would have given him that opportunity. And if we were all wrong, we would have seen that in spring ball." 

Other young players Longo said the coaching staff had earmarked to look at were linemen Asim Richards, Ty Murray and Jonathan Adorno, and receiver Emery Simmons. The coaches were also hoping to see who could replace departed running back Antonio Williams in the depth chart. 

Now, though, those questions will have to be answered much later, when the Tar Heels can finally get back to practice. 

@bg_keyes

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