CHAPEL HILL – To best understand Jeremiah Gemmel’s importance to North Carolina’s football team, it is best look away from his stats.
Not that Gemmel does not produce numbers, he does in impressive fashion. But he provides so much more value to the Tar Heels than tackles, quarterback pressures, and forcing fumbles.
Gemmel is a coach on the field. He knows what every player on defense is supposed to do on each play, regardless of the offensive formation and the scheme the Heels are in on defense. Gemmel knows it all, so he regularly talks to teammates, not just with encouragement and during pre-snap cadences, there is more to what he offers them.
He sounds like a coach because he one day would like to be one.
“I would love to coach,” said Gemmel, who is 6-foot-1, 225 pounds, and hails from Newnan, GA. “If the NFL doesn’t work out or I don’t spend a long time in the league, I would love to come back and be around football. And I think being in this defense, we run everything, we run every front, we run every coverage, so I think I’m learning along the way.
“So, if I wanted to get into coaching, I think what I’m doing right now is definitely helping.”
Gemmel coaching makes sense to Mack Brown, a Hall of Famer himself, who knows a thing or two about the profession and what is required to succeed.
“Absolutely he could be,” Brown said. “He’s one of the smartest players on our team, especially with common sense and related to football. I would think probably (defensive coordinator) Jay (Bateman) and (linebackers coach) Tommy (Thigpen) will tell you, on our defense he’s the smartest about what we’re doing and how we’re doing it.”
The thing is, Gemmel might not be looking for a coaching job as soon as his UNC days are over.
Gemmel can play the sport about which he is so good at discussing. Over the last two seasons, he started all 25 games the Tar Heels have played racking up 162 tackles, 13.5 for a loss of yardage, six of which were sacks. He also has an interception, six PBUs, 21 QB hurries and has hit quarterbacks five times in addition to his sacks.
There is more. Gemmel has forced four fumbles and races sideline-to-sideline in a manner that NFL teams have noticed.
“I do think he’ll be an NFL guy,” Brown said. “And the NFL people that came to pro day this year were talking about him next year and how well he plays and how productive he’s been.
“So, I think he’s another guy, probably next year, that will be in the NFL draft, and then after that, we’d definitely love to have him come back and coach.”
To further enhance his pro potential, Gemmel set out early in the offseason to correct some aspects of his game. Highly self-aware, rolling off his tongue are things some might consider a bit on the minutiae side, but not to Gemmel.
He sees the game like a coach already, so he recognizes nuances others might not catch, including astute teammates. But Gemmel sees it in his own game, too. So, when asked what he has worked to improve, of course he did not offer a canned response. He went deeper than that.
“I wanted to work with being better in coverage with our WICK coverages when we’re wicking the inside (WILL to C) receiver,” Gemmel explained. “Most of the time, it’s someone who is quick, shifty, like a Josh Downs or like a Dazz Newsome. I wanted to be a lot better in my coverage and communicating with the backside boundary safety more in some of our coverages.
“Really, out of all the coverages and some of the calls we have, sometimes the boundary safety – I know what most people are doing, but most of the time I’m a little confused with the boundary safety, and sometimes we have to communicate.”
So, what would someone with a coach’s mindset do to fully ensconce themselves into a situation where they would learn the most about something, or that in particular that Gemmel discussed?
“I think I improved on that by sitting down and meeting with the boundary safeties, because I’m sitting there in film and I’m looking at some of the boundary coverages and reading it and I can’t really understand it unless I have a boundary safety in there watching the tape with me,” he explained. “So, having Gio (Biggers), Don Chapman, Ja’Qurious Conley’s moving back to boundary safety, just having them in there talking with me… has helped me.”
Brown calls Gemmel “a great leader” and Gemmel calls himself a football player who obviously has a passion for the sport.
And whenever his playing days are over with, expect to see Gemmel on a field somewhere teaching younger players all he has learned about this sport, which will be quite a lot.
