The true beginning of Mack Brown’s sixth season back at the helm at North Carolina commences Monday evening when the 2024 Tar Heels open fall camp.
For the next month, UNC will practice 24 times, including five times at night, as it builds toward the season-opener August 29 at Minnesota. That is an 8 PM (EST) kickoff, and with the Heels’ third game also slated at night, Brown wants his team to get in some work under the lights.
“I’m so excited about Sunday when the kids report,” Brown said last Thursday at the ACC Kickoff in Charlotte. “How many people love their job so much that they can’t sleep cause they can’t wait until it starts.”
Carolina is coming off an 8-5 season that included losing five of its last seven contests after starting the campaign 6-0 and ranked among the top ten. It was the third season in the last four years UNC was in the Associated Press top ten for at least one week while not finishing in that impressive group.
The poor close to last season came a year after the Tar Heels were 9-1 before losing their last four games. Carolina is a combined 3-7 the last two years once the calendar has turned to November.
Brown’s noted mantra the last eight months has been figuring out why the Heels collapsed, derailing two highly promising seasons while attempting to fix it. That mission will continue over the next month, and could be aided by expected improvement on defense, and hopes for a more consistently employed ground game featuring All-America running back Omarion Hampton.
“We’re obviously in shape to start the season, we’ve been great the early part of the season,” Brown said. “We have not been good at the end. Every team I’ve coached has been good at the end.
“And we’ve got to figure out the bowl game because we’ve never lost four in a row. And our best players aren’t playing in the bowl games anymore. So by playing more players, you’re going to have somebody more ready to play when guys opt out, if they still opt out. So those are all things we’re looking at.”
UNC returns five starters on offense, including wide receiver Kobe Paysour, who was lost for the season after five games because of an injury. The Tar Heels return seven starters on defense, and including DeAndre Boykins, who missed last fall with an ACL injury, would make it eight.
That side of the ball will look quite different, however, with first-year defensive coordinator Geoff Collins’ aggressive mayhem intent on getting sacks and disrupting opposing offenses.
Key players back on defense including linebacker Power Echols, defensive end Des Evans, cornerback Marcus Allen, cornerback Alijah Huzzie, who started at star in place of Boykins last fall, and defensive tackle Kevin Hester.
Depth chart battles at safety, depth along the defensive front, and use of the Rush position are storylines to keep an eye on over the next month.
Offensively, the tight end room is loaded with John Copenhaver, Bryson Nesbit, and Texas A&M transfer Jake Johnson. Wide receiver is deep in talent with plenty of experience highlighting the room with J.J. Jones and Kobe Paysour. But the youth in that room is loaded, and seeing who breaks through into the rotation is another storyline to watch.
Willie Lampkin is the only starter back on the offensive line, and otherwise, plenty of names unfamiliar to most UNC fans will fill out the majority of the rotation.
And then there’s quarterback, where after five seasons of record-setting numbers from Sam Howell and Drake Maye, uncertainty marks the most important position on the field. Max Johnson begins camp as the slight favorite given his experience at LSU and Texas A&M, Conner Harrell is the holdover in the mix, and Jacolby Criswell transferring back to UNC in the spring could mean a three-man battle for the starting job. Though, according to sources close to the situation, that is unlikely.
The storylines entering camp are in abundance, and some tough decisions by the coaches must be made.
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