Mack Brown raves about UNC's positional flexibility on offensive line

Following another spring worth of Tar Heel football, North Carolina head coach Mack Brown is pleased with how his team is coming along, especially up front. After the conclusion of the spring sessions, Brown met with media to discuss various UNC football topics and went on quite the ramble when asked about his offensive line play.

According to Brown, the Heels just weren’t deep enough last season. They had a starting five they could depend on but largely failed to develop depth beyond them, which wasn’t so much an issue last year as it is this year, since several of those former starters have moved on and Carolina now has to turn to those younger depth pieces. As Brown explains, they didn’t go a good job of bringing along last fall.

So here was Brown discussing his OL options at length while praising roughly a dozen different UNC O-linemen. Just based on this response, you’d think the Heels have droves of maulers ready to pummel ACC defenses this season. Take a look:

Mack Brown gives full player-by-player breakdown down of UNC offensive line

“Yeah, one of the things that happened last year is only five guys played and every now and then Jonathan Adorno played a little bit. And right now, the starting six I would say on the blue team would be Will Barnes at left tackle, Ed Montilus at left guard, Corey Gaynor at Center, either Willie Lampkin or Jonathan Adorno at Right Guard and then Spencer Rolland at right tackle.

And the great thing, with the addition of Willie, he can play center or either guard, so he is really a a huge get for us and he’s tough and he’s getting better. He dislocated his fingers twice the other day in practice, wouldn’t come out. I mean, he had the the trainers tape it and go back in. So, being an All-State wrestler and being 48-0 tells you something, but he is tough as nails. And what he misses with size he gains with toughness and athletic ability. So he’s really going to help us there.

We move Zach to guard last spring and he’s been playing guard most of the time. Trevyon Green, when he comes back from his upper body injury, will be in that mix at tackle. Diego Pounds, Cayden Baker, those guys are tackles and and Malik McGowan’s done better at left guard. We’re really impressed with RJ Grigsby as a freshman guard. It’s hard to put a freshman out there in the offensive line, but he’s been very impressive. DJ Geth is getting more snaps is a backup center.

“So we do feel like that we’re going to lose all these guys and we haven’t played anybody except the ones that have played. We haven’t done a good job of developing the backup guys and that’s something that we’ve got to to do a better job of. And I really like what Randy’s doing. Randy Clements, he’s got them all out there, he’s working them really hard and I think we’ll have at least eight, and love to get to 10, but we’ve got to start looking at who the starters are going to be a year from now.”

The big goal for Mack Brown and the North Carolina OL: get deeper.