CHAPEL HILL – UNC wide receivers coach Gunter Brewer has had an interesting job this month, to take a look at a lot of players that have been around the program for a few years but barely been on the field and another collection of new players to figure out who best can help the Tar Heels win games this fall.
Compounding matters is that by far the team’s most experienced receiver, Austin Proehl, has missed most of fall camp with an injury, so there aren’t really any lead-by-example guys to show the others the way.
The combination of an inexperienced group that know the ropes at the Kenan Football Center and inexperienced ones that don’t have made for a fascinating month for the veteran coach.
THI caught up with Brewer following Monday morning’s practice that closed fall camp to discuss that and other elements of his group. We begin with his response to what was noted above:
“These guys have been around the system somewhat but they just haven’t participated in the prime-time game-type atmosphere that requires you to be the player that you want to be. We told them coming into it this is their chance to prove what they can do. And guys like (Anthony) Ratliff-Williams, (Jordan) Cunningham, Devin Perry, Josh Cabrera, those guys have the opportunities.
“You’ve got some that have been in there, like Austin Proehl, but he’s been injured. You’ve got Thomas Jackson, who’s been in the fray and done a really good job. But then you’ve got the puppies, who hadn’t been in at all and (are) learning the offense completely, the tempo we practice, how hard we practice and what we do. They’re grinding through like the rest of us.”
On true freshmen Beau Corrales and Dazz Newsome, who are getting a lot of work with the 1s and 2s, and what they’ve shown so far…
Brewer: Well, both those guys have shown a propensity to make some plays when they knew what to do. And, the hardest thing, as fast as we play, is be able to process what we do at the speed that we do it, that’s not easy as much as we have in. Things will slow down and they’ll start to process it better because we won’t have the whole offense in. But when they’ve been given opportunities they’ve made some and they’ve shown flashes that they can make the plays to be in the game.
On Devin Perry playing well of late and what how he’s improved…
Brewer: Well, the competitive catch mark is what we look at, and when balls are what we call 50-5o ball, we want them t be 80-20 ball, meaning we come up with 80 percent of them. He’s done his share of making plays, and he’s practicing hard, he’s made himself on special teams of who he is, and that’s a big part of our team, period, is special teams. You can’t start unless you’re on special teams. And that’s a crucial factor in everything we do around here. We’ve won a bunch of games because of big blocks or big returns all because of people doing their job.
On Juval Mollette and how he’s progressing…
Brewer: Everybody progresses at a different stage. We’d like for him to be ahead of where he is right now. He’s made some plays, he just processing some of the things not at the tempo that it to be. If we’d hold and stop and tell everybody what to do that’d be great but we don’t do that. So we have to have guys that can process it at the speed that requires them to be able to make plays. He’s catching on, but a little bit quicker and some of the others are a little bit quicker than him. He’s made some plays. He’s big, he’s tall, he can make plays, so he’ll have a role somewhere. And he’s doing some things on special teams, too. So, one day is one guy’s day, the next day it’s another guy, so we need more consistency out of our group and we need people to separate instead of just staying in a pack right now.
