CHAPEL HILL – A rash of injuries essentially derailed North Carolina’s football season in 2017 and returned again last fall, significantly impacting the tar Heels yet again, and Mack Brown wants to know why.
Brown wasn’t Carolina’s coach at the time, as he replaced Larry Fedora late last November, but it’s now his program and the new UNC staff has conducted spring practice with several of those players unavailable as they continue to mend injuries that occurred at some points during last season’s 2-9 campaign.
The numbers are astounding, and two seasons ago were at or near record levels. UNC lost 19 players for the season with injuries in 2017, with most of the players knocked out for the season before October even arrived. Ten other players missed whole games.
UNC was not mandated by the ACC to post an injury report before league games last season, so by THI’s calculations, 13 starters and 15 other players missed entire games with some key players such as Aaron Crawford, Brandon Fritts, K.J. Sails, Myles Wolfolk, Chazz Surratt, Allen Cater and Antoine Greene all lost for the season at some point during the campaign.
So, Brown wants some answers.
“We’re really studying why they’ve had so many injuries the last two years and we’re looking at it hard,” he said, following Tuesday’s practice. “We’re going back through every injury trying to pull up the film of what happened for that injury and looking at why it happened, how quickly they got back on the field.
“So, we’re looking at all those injuries because we’ve got to get more depth, but we cannot continue to have that many injuries.”
Brown says the current team has been without five prospective starters on defense this spring, including Myles Dorn, Jason Strowbridge and Cater, who started a few games last season. The staff wants to go two deep on defense in every game to keep players fresh, which not only enhances performance but keeps guys healthy.
“I do know that when you get more depth and guys aren’t playing as much and they’re fresh when they’re in the game you’re less likely to be injured. I do know that,” Brown said.
Being decimated by injuries for consecutive seasons may be more than just a coincidence. In Brown’s 30 seasons as a head coach, he can recall just one year his team came close to experiencing what UNC has over the last two falls.
“The only time it happened in my life was our last year (2013) at Texas, we lost 15 guys, they were starters,” he said. “I couldn’t figure it out then and then I left. But that’s the only time it happened.”
He’s inherited a situation where the residue from those injuries remains not just in limiting some of the current players, but the overall effect of winning five games in two seasons in part because of the lost players. So, Brown wants to know everything that took place, so he’s asked the medical staff to peel away every layer they can to find out exactly how each injury transpired.
“I want them to go back and look at all of it to see if they can come up with any reasons when they happened, what time of the year they happened, what drills they were in, were they in games, were they in practice, just have a complete overview to find out why,” he said.
The study is covering only injuries the occurred over the last two years.
