CHAPEL HILL – North Carolina offensive coordinator Phil Longo met with the media Tuesday afternoon to field questions about how his offense is dealing with the opt outs of three key players, their replacements, quarterback Sam Howell and much more.
Thirteenth-ranked UNC plays No. 5 Texas A&M in the Orange Bowl on Saturday night at Hard Rock Stadium in Miami Gardens, FL.
Above is Longo’s full press conference and below are notes and pulled quotes from what he had to say:
*The staff learned about Javonte Williams’ decision to opt out of the Orange Bowl just before a pre-practice meeting Saturday. The team had Sunday off and the staff spent Monday also tweaking a game plan for Saturday. The focus was how to distribute the planned touches Longo had for Williams.
In fact, he figured Williams would get 30 touches, so Longo went through three conditional games on Christmas Day, working in scenarios in which to use Williams. That has now been scrapped. So, what has been the process in tweaking the approach for this game?
“I'd say 30 carries…,” Longo said. “The 30 carries that I alluded to where the 30 of the 60 or 70 plays that you get in the ball game, were kind of geared towards getting him the football one way or the other. And so, I called three games with Javonte in mind and later on, on Saturday, we found out that he would not be with us.
“And so, you have to go make your adjustments, so we've got to take 30 reps and we've got to distribute them and spread them out to the other weapons that we do have. So, game plan adjusting going on over the weekend and we just kind of put that to the test today in practice and it went very well. So, looking forward to having a good week of preparation leading up to Saturday.”
*UNC’s offense is what it is. It’s not like Longo is going to abandon the air raid, its run schemes, and the receivers won’t find grass anymore. Yes, there’s some tweaking going on, but that’s normal given the slightly changed composition of a unit.
“I think we're excited about the opportunity that some of the young guys are going to get, I'm excited to see them,” Longo said. “I mean, you're fans of these guys, we spend every day with them and you know that they're our future and you look forward to watching them develop and watching them play. We just have a scenario here where they're going to get an opportunity a little bit sooner.
“So you plug them in and we're not gonna change anything. And we do what we do. We're not going to reinvent the wheel here. We still have 42 other guys that know the offense and are instinctive in the offense that we've been running and been successful with all year. So, we're going to do what we do. We’re gonna plug the new guys in and keep going.”
*The Tar Heels still have their offensive line intact as well as quarterback Sam Howell. So, what has been Longo’s message to his star QB?
“I often think coaches are guilty of making this game a lot more difficult than it has to be,” Longo said. “And I think we could very easily have made a big deal out of a little adversity and made a problem out of nothing.
“I think the only coaching that I gave Sam, that he probably didn't even need because he's mature enough to understand this now leading the offense for the last 24 games, but the only advice I gave him and the only coaching I told him was not to feel like he has to go and win this game himself. The best thing he can do for our football team right now is to keep doing what he has been doing.
“Manage the offense, make plays when he has the opportunity to make plays and not go outside. The only time he's ever gotten in trouble at all, and it's been very few, is when he's tried to do more than he really needs to do on a play. And I think he’ll tell you the same thing. And he hasn't done that in quite a while. And so, that's really the only advice I gave him was, look, we need to stay focused and keep doing what we're doing. And he just gave me the nod that he always gave me and we go out and practice the way we always do. So, it's business as usual right now offensively.”
*Carolina has scored a touchdown on its first possession in nine of its 11 games, but without three players highly responsible for that output, is he concerned might it take time to develop the kind of chemistry associated with so much early-game success?
“Truthfully, I'm really not. I think if I did that, I would be making a mistake on my own part,” Longo replied. “I think that our offense is the offense. We still have eight of them, and then the five that we rotate in and out of those other positions, that are really good football players and have contributed to all the success that the three that won't be here have had.
“So, do we expect the guys that we're plugging in to be Javonte and Michael and Dyami? No, we don't. So, the only difference will be is we may distribute the ball to more players because we need to. I don't know if there's a guy on the roster that can tote the ball 30 times the way Javonte could right now with the way he's playing.
“And so, you're gonna see more names and more faces have a role on Saturday, but in terms of what I'm calling and how I call it and when I call it, I don't know that any of that's gonna change. To me, that's going away from what we do well.”
*Longo is high on some receivers UNC fans don’t think about that often. Emery Simmons has started since Beau Corrales went down with a season-ending injury, Khafre Brown, Dyami’s younger brother, has shown some flashes, and Antoine Green has played some over the last couple of years. So what are Longo’s thoughts about how they will fit in and the receiver unit as a whole?
“There's three receivers that we're very high on,” Longo said. “Khafre Brown’s made some big plays this year. Emery Simmons, his role has increased every week as the season has gone on and he's made some huge plays, especially in the second half of the season. And then we're going to lean on Antoine Green somewhat in the game as well.
“So those three, and you may see some of Justin Olson, those three or four guys are going to be our wide receiver core. And in the backfield, you're gonna see Elijah (Green), you're gonna see Josh Henderson, you're gonna see British Brooks and that's who's here. Those are the guys that know the job, they're the ones we have confidence in. And so, those will be the names that you're calling out on Saturday as opposed to some of the others.”
*The increased reps for some of the players asked to step in for Brown, Carter and Williams really hasn’t been a big deal at practice. They already get plenty of work in during the week as it is, even if they don’t play much in the games. Getting players ready to play a key role on a finger snap because injuries do happen is part of this process.
“I think you're always learning,” Longo said. “What I learned today was there were some guys out there that took a lot more reps than they usually get, and they handled it really well. And so, that was kind of promising today. But, as I've said, the white team that goes in after the blue team gets the exact same amount of reps in practice all week long, and that includes Friday.
“So, those guys have had as much time to prepare for what they do at their skill set at their position as the guys that were playing ahead of them. I think from knowing the offense and making this cut and that catch and this block and doing all those things, those are things that they know how to do already. And they have to understand they've got to go execute and do those things against live competition on Saturday.”
*Jacob Turner contributed to this repoit.
