CHAPEL Hill – Two bye weeks is rare in a college football season, but that has been the case across the nation this season. And for North Carolina, its open dates came well after the mid-point of the season, with the most recent following consecutive road wins.

With the vibe much more positive and less stressed inside the Kenan Football Center, and the possibility of the Tar Heels playing in a bowl game increasingly realistic, the coaching staff rolled up their sleeves last week and went to work on roster management.

The new normal is trying to figure out what players want to enter the transfer portal to evaluate what the needs will be when the portal opens next month. There’s redshirt conversations, and even bowl game questions, as in who will play and who won’t?

UNC is 5-4 overall and 2-3 in the ACC with Wake Forest visiting this weekend before the Tar Heels close the season at Boston College and at home against NC State. One more win and Mack Brown’s team will be in the postseason for the sixth time in the six seasons since his return to Chapel Hill in 2018.

Brown met with the media Monday for his weekly press conference, and once of the topics was the many prongs that comprise roster management. Below, we hit on each one including the head coach’s comments:

*The staff met with the true freshmen who can still redshirt to discuss whether or not they want to. They can play in a maximum of four games and still redshirt, plus they can play in the bowl game, too.

“If a guy’s got three games now, or if he’s already played in four games, you talk to him about, ‘if you’re just on kicking teams, do you want to finish on those kicking teams or do you want to wait,’” Brown said.

The list of freshmen who can still redshirt: LB Ashton Woods 2 games; DL Leroy Jackson 1 game (our for the season); DB Zion Ferguson 2 games; OL Jani Norwood 2 games; WR Alex Taylor 4 games; WR Vari Green 4 games; DB Khalil Conley 0 games; LB Crews Law 0 games; FL Peter Pesansky 0 games; Rush Curtis Simpson 0 games; LB Evan Bennett 0 games; Rush Daniel Anderson 0 games; QB Michael Merdinger 0 games; OL Andrew Rosinski 0 games; OL Desmond Jackson 0 games; TE Timmy Lawson 0 games.

In an era when kids want to play, play and play, Brown said much of the class is choosing to redshirt this season.

“It’s a big number,” he said. “I was surprised.”

Now, what if the player and staff have differing opinions on whether he should play or redshirt?

“If they’re not playing it’s easy,” Brown said. “What we don’t want to do, to be clear, is we don’t want to play someone, that would like to redshirt, in a game where he’s not going to change the outcome of the game.

“That’s the biggest thing at the end here; let’s don’t waste a young guy’s year because he’s going to be the third guy going down on a kickoff, and you stick him in to be nice to him and let him play. That’s for the bowl game.”

As a side note, Caleb Hood is a senior running back, but Brown said they hope to redshirt him since he’s played in only three games so far. Hood can play in one of UNC’s last three regular season games plus the bowl.

The staff met with the players regarding their futures at Carolina.

“Because this time of the year you’ve got agents that are calling schools and looking around all over the place because we’re getting calls from other teams,” Brown said.

The staff also met: who might they lose, who they have on campus right now to replace immediately someone who enters the portal; and they looked depth chart possibilities for the spring.

“Nobody has said anything about transferring,” Brown said. “Now, they might not tell us, very honestly. We feel like that’s kind of the elephant in the room now; who’s gonna leave and who’s coming back and how many are you going to have.”

The proposal of 105 players on scholarship also complicates matters, as Brown also noted.

“So, what does that mean” And what about your walk-ons, and who gets to stay and who has to leave.”

The staff already knows they must replenish up front defensively, possibly get a running back from the portal, and this weekend, UNC is hosting a quarterback from Liberty who is in the portal. That could be an indication that one or more of the four quarterbacks currently on the roster, all of whom have eligibility for 2025, may not be back.

“We’re losing a lot of defensive linemen,” Brown said. “We’ll probably lose (running back) Omarion (Hampton). You would think he would go because he’s going to be such a high draft choice. So, you have to look at key positions and you need to fill those spots in December because you need them for spring practice.”

They also talked with some of the players that could choose to leave early for the NFL and those who may opt out of the bowl game, if the Tar Heels qualify. They currently have five wins, so one more and they will go bowling.

“We also looked at the depth chart for the bowl game because of possible opt outs because that’s been harder,” Brown said. “It’s hard to figure out who your team is going to be. But we’ve played more people so we’ve got more depth, so we feel like we’ll be better prepared for a bowl than in our past.”