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New-era Heels, new Kenan debut

Posted on September 1, 2011September 1, 2011 by Staff


By Eddy Landreth
Staff Writer

Come Saturday at 3:30 p.m., for at least three, possibly four hours, Carolina’s football players will lose themselves within the game they love enough to spend much of each year preparing to play.

When the Tar Heels kick off against James Madison at Kenan Stadium, a new end-zone building, complete with luxury-suite boxes and added stadium seating, will debut along with two new, enormous video boards resting atop the end-zone structures at both ends of the field.

The bricks, glass-enclosed boxes and additional seats are only part of what is new. After saying he had supported coach Butch Davis for nearly a year, Chancellor Holden Thorp did an about-face and fired Davis just days before preseason camp began.

In Davis’ place, former defensive coordinator Everett Withers will walk the sidelines as interim head coach. Withers stands to be the beneficiary of the successful recruiting Davis and his staff did from the time he was hired in November of 2006.

If Withers feels anxious about this moment, he is not sharing.

“I usually don’t get anxious about a game until Saturday morning,” Withers said. “On Friday night, I can’t wait to go to bed. I just want us, when we get on that bus, to come over here and win a ballgame.”

Any successful football team has a strong foundation, and the underpinning can usually be found along the offensive and defensive lines.

These Tar Heels are no different. This may well be the finest offensive line ever assembled at UNC, sporting a collection of athletes who range from 6 feet 2 inches to 6-8 and weigh anywhere from 310 to 340 pounds.

What makes these players special is that their size is not fat resting on slow legs. These kids are genuine athletes, eager to become road-pavers for first-year starting quarterback Bryn Renner and the collection of running backs taking the ball from him.

“They are a tight-knit group,” Withers said of the offensive linemen. “[The starters] are just like coaches to the guys behind them. We’ll go into the game with at least nine guys that we think can play in our offensive line. The knowledge, what Coach [Sam] Pittman has done with those guys, the teaching and how they understand that position, is outstanding.

“The third thing is the athleticism. You look at Jonathan Cooper; you look at James Hurst; you look at Travis Bond. You look at the athleticism of some guys with the size that they have, they can run. It’s the strength of the team. We need to use it. It needs to be a focal point of what we do this year.”

When Withers says the Tar Heels need to utilize this asset, he means offensive coordinator John Shoop must avoid the temptation to throw for the mere act of throwing.

“Getting to run behind those big guys is a blessing,” said redshirt running back Giovani Bernard, who has been described by someone close to the team as the best-looking running back prospect at UNC in many years.

“Not every running back gets to run behind such a good offensive line,” Bernard said. “I’m grateful for that.”

As strong as the offensive line appears, it is only half of the foundation. The defensive line has several legitimate professional prospects, starting with Quinton Coples. Coples has returned to defensive end after spending last season at tackle, gluing together a line that otherwise would have been torn apart by player indiscretions.

While Coples and fellow defensive end Donte Paige-Moss comprise a set of bookends as good as any in the country, sophomores Kareem Martin and Tim Jackson have added quality depth.

“It’s good to have a guy like Kareem, who has gotten better every day he has been here,” Withers said.

The major area of concern for this team is the secondary, which is thin in numbers and low on experience. A thumb injury will keep sophomore cornerback Jabari Price on the sideline for the early portion of the season. The ensuing domino effect knocked Tre Boston forward from safety to cornerback.

Secondary coach Troy Douglas is anxious for Boston to return to safety, a position at which Douglas believes Boston can become an elite performer.

The question that will be answered in the next few months is whether this team can continue to overcome the onslaught of controversy that seems to fill its path, regardless of direction.

If the Tar Heels can do that, they will have done more than escape for brief periods on Saturday afternoons and evenings. They will have achieved when even their own administration has done all it could to sabotage that possibility.

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