Who’s the Next Mack Hollins? UNC Spring Practice Provides Springboard

Spring football practice can serve as a springboard to fall success. Carolina football saw that last season when unheralded walk-on receiver Mack Hollins took advantage of his offseason opportunities to transform into a difference-maker on game days. Who will be this year’s Mack Hollins?

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“You’re seeing them get better and better each day as a unit. They’ve played together. They know each other. I don’t have the same concerns that I had last year,” UNC head coach Larry Fedora says.

A year older and a year wiser, the UNC offensive line is shaping up to provide better protection to quarterbacks Marquise Williams and Mitch Trubisky this fall.

That’s welcome news to Williams, who’s still nursing a hip injury and hopes to be afforded more time to find one of his talented receivers downfield.

The most glaring weakness for the Tar Heels in 2014 was the bruised and battered defense. Armed with new defensive coordinator Gene Chizik, all eyes will be on the much-maligned UNC unit.

But Coach Fedora says he likes the improvements he’s been seeing out on Navy Field.

“[Dajuan] Drennon’s doing a really nice job. [Jeff] Shoettmer has picked up right where he left off. He’s a very intelligent guy. Shakeel Rashad has taken a lot of pressure off himself. He’s slid back to linebacker and has done a really nice job adjusting there. Donnie Miles has done a nice job adjusting from the Ram back to a safety,” Coach Fedora says.

With fresh defensive schemes being applied by Coach Chizik, veterans and rookies alike are embracing the learning process, soaking up a new philosophy from a national championship-winning coach. But that’s not always an easy process.

“Right now, they’re learning new techniques, new philosophy and new schemes. There’s a little bit of thought process involved with them,” Coach Fedora says.

Part of the intrigue to this time of the year is the unknown. Who will be the next star performer to step up and emerge out of the shadows and into the spotlight in Kenan Stadium on Saturdays?

Coach Fedora takes a crack at a few guys who have the potential to step out of obscurity and into the vocabulary of Carolina fans everywhere.

“Damien Washington is getting a ton of reps right now which is helping him. Thomas Jackson, who’s a walk-on kid, is doing a great job and making a lot of plays out there. The young kids that we’re redshirting are getting a bunch of reps. Juval Mollette, who’s one of the early enrollees, is getting a bunch of reps. They are all getting valuable reps that are going to pay off for them next fall,” Coach Fedora says.

But it’s not just coaches and players who’ve been hitting the practice fields in Chapel Hill. Upon invitation from Coach Fedora, UNC professors are turning up in droves to check out their students’ ‘other classroom.’

“The professors see them in a different classroom. This is our classroom out here. They get to see how we teach them. It’s a little bit different than the way they teach in the classroom. We can just keep repping it until we get it right. They don’t get that opportunity,” Coach Fedora says.

If the football field is the classroom, then it’s lecture and study time right now. And who knows, if the teachers and students dole out and absorb the material, those fall exams might just become a breeze.