CHAPEL HILL – North Carolina Defensive Line Coach Ted Monachino met with a few members of the media following practice earlier this week to field questions about his unit.
Monachino, who was an analyst with the Tar Heels last season and is regarded as an elite pass-rush teacher, was asked about aspects of his line, Des Evans’ opportunity in his last season, newcomer Josh Harris, depth, cross training, and more.
Above is video of Monachino’s Q&A session, and below are some notes and a few quotes from what he had to say:
*Josh Harris spent four years at NC State and last season at Ole Miss. He transferred to UNC in the spring because he wanted to be closer to home, valued being at Carolina’s grad school, and he wants to play in the NFL, and views learning under UNC DL Coach Ted Monachino as the best path to achieve that dream.
Monachino has been impressed with Harris so far.
“Josh has been a great addition to our group. It’s great to have his maturity, it’s great to have his approach. He taken a pro approach to everything that we’ve done. Football makes great sense to Josh, so it doesn’t take a lot of extra time. He gets it. I can show him on the board and he gets it. I can show it to him film and he gets us. I don’t have to hit every level of teaching with Josh because football makes great sense to him.
“The best part about Josh is the person. To have another mature grown man in the room has made a difference with all of our guys, and I think he would agree that he’s made a great decision, and we couldn’t be happier that he’s here.”
*First-year UNC defensive coordinator Geoff Collins said last week he thinks the Tar Heels can go nine or ten deep along the defensive line. Monachino agrees, and then some.
“Absolutely, (and) ten is a low number. I’m not afraid to play up to 14 of them. There’s 14 them that are prepared to play. That’s three deep plus a couple of guys with some position flexibility…
“We’ve got a talented room. We’ve got a veteran, talented room. And all those guys are going to carve out roles. We’re starting to add some personnel packages that give guys some different opportunities, and they’re all starting to show up in different ways, which is really fun to watch.”
Asked a follow-up about he number 14, Monachino replied, “Yep, I think there’s 14 guys that can play.”
*Des Evans has said all of the right things, and he’s stated a reason for coming back is to finally morph into the player so many expected to see. That hasn’t happened in his four seasons, but with the Covid year giving him a fifth season, the Sanford, NC, native has that chance. And Monachino likes what he’s seen from Evans so far.
“I think we’re past potential with Des. I think we’re at a point now where it’s all on the line with Des. And Des has taken an approach that he doesn’t have many more of these left and he wants to play this game as long as long as he possibly can. And he’s focused on being a great teammate, he’s focused on being smart and tough and effort-filled, and those are the things that are going to carry him whether he gets to continue playing beyond this or not.
“Des has been a great leader in our room; not just a good leader, a great leader. And not only by example but vocally in the meeting room and on the practice field. I’m so proud of him and the things that he’s been able to do from an academic standpoint and to be able to fight like crazy and compete, and give the effort he’s given in the classroom to be at this stage in his career is remarkable. And I’m really proud of Des.”
*Unlocking Evans was one of Monachino’s missions when he took the d-line job after serving last season as an analyst.
“You hate to have a big talented football player that’s, by a lot of opinions, is underachieving. So, what we did is we tried to take some of the rocks out of Des’ pocket and let him play fast. We try not to weight him down with a bunch of things that he doesn’t need.
“Yeah, there’s a lot of things involved. We’ve got a lot of defense, but if we can simplify it and tell him where his leverage is and where his eyes belong, I think we can get a lot done.”
*Considering how Evans has developed into a multi-down player and the emergence of Beau Atkinson, Monachino may find ways to get both on the field at the same time. At least Evans and Atkinson said in recent interviews they think it will happen at some point.
“We’re getting to the point where there’s more and more defensive end stuff with both guys. We do some things with our rush backers that the ends don’t necessarily do, but there’s a lot more stuff that they’re both doing similar things, which is huge.
“And when that happens, now guys can start to cross train and build some position flexibility.”
*Depth, depth, depth, playing plenty of guys and more a been huge themes over the last few weeks. Monachino explained the depth chart and pecking order of expected use.
“The one thing that we’ve done is we’ve got a depth chart built, and we’ve set that depth chart in a way that we believe in the first two, certainly, and then there’s a few of them in that third group that we believe in. But what we’ve come to now is we’ve started to cross train our inside guys and our outside guys, so we get a guy with a broken chin strap, we don’t have to put the second best player at that position in, we put the next best player in period.
“And we can move the guys where we need to so we’ve always got 11 good players. So, what we’re trying to do is build the group in that way that we’ve got a great understanding of structure and concept, and our guys understand the defense as a whole from the 10,000-foot view, but they also understand the individual techniques involved in executing each call.”
