Improving Defense Facing State's Many Weapons

CHAPEL HILL – North Carolina defensive coordinator John Papuchis met with the media following Tuesday’s practice at Kenan Stadium to discuss his unit’s continued improvement and Saturday’s opponent, N.C. State.

Here are some snippets of what Papuchis had to say:

*UNC’s defense turned in its best statistical game of the season in Saturday’s 65-10 win over Western Carolina, but the reality is the Catamounts are an FCS team, so the Tar Heels were simply more gifted, deeper and more capable.

So what can a coordinator learn about his team from such a performance that indicates true positives, given the competition?

“The biggest thing is you want to see execution,” Papuchis said. “You want to see guys playing hard, you want to be able to execute, and in both cases I thought we did a nice job of that. I thought on third down we were good again.

“First series, once we settled into what was going on and how they were trying to attack us, our guys did a nice job of taking the corrections and getting things ironed out.”

WCU was 4-15 on third downs.

*Jonathan Smith got a chance to play a lot after Cole Holcomb went out with an injury and turned in his best performance as a Tar Heel racking up 11 tackles - 3 for a loss of yards – and returning a fumble for a touchdown.

Smith has battled a knee injury and then didn’t perform as well as he or the staff wanted when he got a chance to play when Andre Smith went down. His performance Saturday was big for that game but also moving forward.

“I thought it was huge,” Papuchis said. “John played about two or three games last year sparingly, was hurt, played some early this year – really, this was kind of like a freshman year for him – and I think he’d be the first to tell you had some struggles in the middle part of the year.

“He’s really practiced well the last couple of weeks, I thought you could tell he’s made a jump. You hadn’t seen it on the field, yet, but you’d definitely seen it on the practice field, and to see him have some success in the game is huge, because he is a big part of our future and what we’re doing.”

*N.C. State has a number of offensive weapons and can score in a lot of different ways. What is the greatest challenge facing the Wolfpack?

“Their multiplicity. They have multiple guys that do a lot of things well. Jaylen Samuels does a lot of things: He’s a running back, wide out, he can line up at tight end, he’s the wildcat quarterback. Nyheim Hines is a threat everywhere he lines up.

“From a quarterback perspective, they make great decisions with the football, they’re very good up front on the offensive line. I know it sounds sometimes like coach speak, but I think they’re as total package of an offense as we’ve seen.”