Not Looking Back, Run D Primed For Improvement

CHAPEL HILL – Stop the run, stop the run, stop the run.

That’s what most North Carolina football fans say when asked what they believe is the key to this season’s team equaling or surpassing last year’s 11-3 mark and ACC Coastal Division title.

It isn’t exactly a reach to suggest if the Tar Heels are better stopping the run they will again be formidable. The offense should be outstanding, the special teams very good, and the secondary proved a year ago it was plenty capable of doing its job and returns mostly intact. So, Carolina’s pass defense could be among the nation’s best in 2016.

But the run defense is another story.

Last season, the Tar Heels finished 121st out of 127 FBS teams in run defense allowing 247 yards rushing per game, including 5.1 per attempt. The problems that were clear over the season were magnified in the ACC championship game loss to Clemson and Russell Athletic Bowl loss to Baylor.

The Tigers ran for 319 yards averaging 5.7 per attempt, and Baylor set an all-time bowl record – any bowl ever played – by gobbling up 645 yards on the ground, averaging 7.7 per rush.

Upon reflection, do those performances still personally grate at defensive coordinator Gene Chizik?

“Not for me, personally,” he said. “But it bothers me that we didn’t win those two games, and if you play better defensively you have a chance to win both of those. That’s the way it is.”

But that was then and this is now. And Carolina’s staff is confident it’s more prepared to deal with Georgia’s vaunted rushing attack in Saturday night’s opener.

“I think we have a really good plan,” Chizik said. “I feel like the emphasis has been there since the end of last season. As you go back and study some of the things we did well and the things we didn’t do as well, they see where out shortcomings were – might see where out shortcomings were – and it’s not all on the players.

“A lot of the way that we called defenses and designed a lot of things based on winning games, so you can’t pin it and say, ‘You can’t stop the run,’ that’s not true. A lot of it’s based on game plan and what you’re willing to give up. You’d like to say you can stop it all all of the time, (but) nobody does it. So you have to pick and choose your spots, and we did that a lot last year.”

It doesn’t help matters that would-be third-year starting defensive end Dajaun Drennon will be out Saturday, and starting defensive tackle Jalen Dalton has missed most of the last two weeks with an injury. He’s expected to start Saturday, though he may not be 100 percent.

The Tar Heels will go down to Atlanta with five defensive tackles that have the staff’s full confidence and at least two defensive ends – Mikey Bart and Tyler Powell – who have logged significant in Bart’s case, and fairly significant in Powell’s case, snaps in games. Their backups? Not so much.

So there are question marks not just stemming from those last two games a year ago, some prior performances were also concerning. But given that the group is bigger across the board, has the knowledge of what went wrong, and also that the staff has installed so much more than the packages the defense executed a year ago, the group is about as ready as it was going to be at this stage.

Oh, there’s one more thing: Desire.

“We work on it, we practice on it, and the guys have the will to fix it,” defensive line coach Tray Scott said. “And I have the will to get it fixed, and we’ve got to be able to do that.”

The numbers from last season are what they are. They will stand forever, and there’s nothing this year’s team can do about it. But the important thing is they aren’t trying to fix what has long been in their rear view mirror, they are looking ahead at what they can do this fall to avoid such atorylines next summer.

“It’s not about that anymore,” junior defensive tackle Naz Jones said about what previous happened. “It’s about now. Now is here and now is what matters.”