CHAPEL HILL – Five practices into fall camp, North Carolina defensive coordinator Gene Chizik is pleased with the progress his unit has made with fundamentals. Good thing for the Tar Heels, too, because it’s an area in which they struggled on that side of the ball last fall.

Aside from the discipline associated with penalties, the focus has been more on the pure essence of defensive football: Tackling, fighting off blockers, and being well-positioned to make plays.

Chizik’s approach is a dramatic departure from what UNC employed under previous coordinator Jay Bateman. Much less reliant on trying to out-scheme opposing offense, Chizik wants his impressive group to simply win their battles. It is Football 101, and class is well in session inside the Koman Practice Complex.

“I think we’ve made a lot of progress,” Chizik said Wednesday, following UNC’s fifth practice of fall camp. “I think we’ve done a really, really good job of teaching them, and making them understand the importance of fundamentals.

“A lot of people get so into the scheme and all that, but you lose fundamentals. We haven’t done that. I think we’ve gotten better. I think five days is really starting to show up.”

At issue, before anything else, is the Tar Heels must learn to execute more efficiently in the tackling department. Last season, they were charged with 132 missed tackles, placing them in the middle of the ACC on a per-game level.

Carolina’s scheme was built more for either out-witting offenses or simply guessing correctly, and it led to a ton of big plays and long drives. Opponents put together 32 drives of 75 or more yards, of which 31 resulted in touchdowns.

Chizik’s mission is to improve the tackling, in which a stop here or there could have cut down those lengthy scoring drives, and given that Carolina lost three games by a touchdown or less, and two others by 10 points that were battles well into the fourth quarter, it isn’t difficult to see how such a difference could have flipped the season, in which UNC closed with a 6-7 mark.

Communicating the importance of every element of practice and how it translates to the field is part of trimming down on what ailed the Heels a year ago.

“I tell them, ‘When we do something out there on a drill and it’s not showing up in 11-on-11, we’re not teaching it right, or you don’t understand what we want you to do,’” Chizik said. “That’s the whole purpose of the drills. The accumulation of the drills are starting to come alive. I’m seeing it in practice and I’m really happy with it.”

There is a lot of proof in Chizik’s pudding, too.

In 2014, a season in which UNC also finished 6-7 and had mega defensive issues, the Tar Heels missed 153 tackles for a percentage of 19.4 misses. Chizik came in that winter to clean up a big mess, and did just that.

********************************************************************************

Hey UNC fans, join Tar Heel Illustrated right now for FREE through August!

Promo Code: KICKOFF2022

********************************************************************************

In 2015, UNC played 14 games as opposed to 13 the season before, but missed just 93 tackles, for a miss percentage of 10.4 percent. North Carolina also went 11-3 and won the Coastal Division that season.

So, there isn’t any misunderstanding of what the top priority for every member of the team on that side of the ball is this fall, and every day moving forward. Football 101, right?

“Tackling, number one,” Chizik said. “We’ve emphasized that ad nauseum. So, it’s been tackling, how we approach tackles, how we finish tackles, body position-wise, where we belong on tackles. So that’s been number one.”

Next is how to position oneself to best make tackles, or impede ball-carrier’s progress allowing teammates to swarm and make the tackles.

“The other is just striking blocks and playing in gaps, and just playing the defense the way the defense was designed,” Chizik said. “It’s not about guruing up all these defenses, it’s about us being able to get off blocks, strike blocks, never stay blocked, tackling in open space, all of those things – creating and forcing turnovers, which we worked today – that are really going to get us where we need to be.”

And as the Tar Heels climb toward their opener in 24 days, their accomplished coordinator believes they are headed in that direction.