Fall Camp Practice Report: Day 9
Note: Sunday player interviews are below this report.
CHAPEL HILL – North Carolina may have held its first scrimmage of fall camp Saturday, but the Tar Heels were back on the practice field Sunday morning for their ninth workout since practice opened.
One of the points of emphasis for the offense Sunday was to have more of an edge than it did during Saturday’s scrimmage that didn’t go so well for the O and very well for the guys on the other side of the line of scrimmage.
Collectively, the players say they weren’t as ready as needed and just didn’t make quality decisions at times. All that went wrong are all fixable issues.
“It’s very correctable,” junior running back Michael Carter said Sunday. “It’s just everybody doing their singular job that play every play. It sounds hard, and it is, but that’s why we’re here. We’re here because we can make that play and we’re capable of it. Coach said if we weren’t capable of making that play, we wouldn’t play.
“It just comes down to locking into that play and leaving that play in the past once it’s done.”
Senior tight end Carl Tucker said “everybody was slow” and the offense lacked energy. He chalked some of it up to nerves. Like Carter, he says the problems are up to them.
“We know what we have to do to get that fixed and we know that it’s not a personnel problem, it starts with us,” Tucker said. “And we know if we fight for each other and play for each other there’s no stopping us.”
*One of the storylines of fall camp we’ve been following is who will take advantage of the enormous opportunity to fill in behind starting defensive tackles Aaron Crawford and Jason Strowbridge, both of whom UNC Coach Mack Brown has called NFL players. One of the names that has consistently come up during camp has been redshirt freshman Jahlil Taylor, who played 59 total snaps in two games last fall.
Taylor (6-foot, 300 pounds) is well aware he’s making a push for one of those spots.
“It’s going pretty good,” Taylor said following Sunday’s practice. “I’m trying to compete every day, I’m trying to make everybody around me and myself better. So it’s going pretty good. We’re getting more competitive, more physical and it’s showing. The hard work we’re putting in is showing each and every day.”
Taylor said the most difficult things he’s had to adjust to in Jay Bateman’s defense is more collective and not so individual.
“It’s just getting used to everything,” he said. “Putting everything together, getting our chemistry right – not just with the players but the coaches. And I think we’re… putting one and one together and coming together as a whole team to play as a good defense.”
Taylor said he’s mostly playing the nose guard spot behind Crawford, though he has worked some at the three technique. As of now, it appears Taylor has a solid handle on the second-team spot.
We will have more on Taylor later in the week in a feature story.
*Linebacker is also a position group loaded with opportunity for someone to step up and earn a spot in the rotation. The two veterans, Jonathan Smith and Dominique Ross, have been inconsistent and everyone else in the room have either barely played the position in college or not at all.
One of the more experienced football players in the group was actually a quarterback his first two seasons at UNC, but Chazz Surratt is now a linebacker. We’ve monitored his transition from the first day of spring practice last March and continue to.
Ask his teammates or head coach, and it’s absolute that Surratt has made significant progress. So where do things now stand with the junior from Denver, NC.
“He’s plenty physical. He can tackle, he (runs a) 4.5, he’s 230 pounds,” Brown said Sunday. “And all he’s got to do is do a better job of reading the play and just growing with his instincts because he’s got to have every possible mental rep that he can have because he just hasn’t done it before.”