Carolina opens preseason practice on Monday night. Here’s a position-by-position look at the Tar Heels’ starters and backups entering camp.
Adam Smith
CHAPEL HILL, N.C. — North Carolina fully is shifting into preseason football mode this week. Players reported Sunday, ahead of the team's first training camp practice Monday night.
Coach Mack Brown's Tar Heels have 20 practices allotted on their preseason schedule, before game week arrives and the final preparations are put in place for their Aug. 29 season opener at Minnesota on a Thursday night.
What follows here is a position-by-position look at UNC's projected depth chart entering camp, based on the information we've learned and gathered throughout the spring and summer. Some areas could see movement on the depth chart as the next four weeks unfold, while others are cemented. We've mostly listed starters and backups, but in some cases more names are in the mix.
OFFENSIVE LINE
LEFT TACKLE
79 -Howard Sampson
65 - Andrew Rosinski
LEFT GUARD
52 - Jonathan Adorno
64-Malik McGowan
63 -Zach Greenberg
CENTER
58-Austin Blaske
53 - Willie Lampkin
RIGHT GUARD
53 - Willie Lampkin
55 - Zach Rice
63 -Zach Greenberg
RIGHT TACKLE
78 - Trevyon Green
75 -Jakiah Leftwich
Extra points: As a position group, UNC's offensive line is replacing four departed starters and has question marks aplenty entering training camp, though coach Mack Brown and stud running back Omarion Hampton made it a point during last week's ACC Kickoff event to commend the potential in place up front. Sampson (6-foot-8, 325 pounds) and Green (6-7, 340) are massive bookends at the tackle spots, but neither have started a game onthislevel. The progress of new transfer arrivals Leftwich (from Georgia Tech) and Greenberg (from Division III Muhlenberg College) certainly will be worth monitoring. Both joined the Tar Heels through the portal after spring practices were finished. Leftwich played in 17 games and made eight starts across the last two seasons at Georgia Tech. Blaske and Lampkin figure to be the leaders of this group. Rosinski and Eli Sutton were UNC's backup tackles during the spring.
TIGHT END
18 - Bryson Nesbit
81 - John Copenhaver
19-Jake Johnson
Extra points: The Tar Heels are well-stocked at tight end again. And it's fitting that the jersey numbers of Nesbit (No. 18) and Copenhaver (No. 81) can be transposed, because they might as well be considered co-starters by this point in their UNC careers. Both players are coming off surgeries and sat out during the spring. Copenhaver toughed it out and played through a broken right hand last season, after suffering the injury in the season opener. The stretchy Nesbit, UNC's second-leading returning receiver behind J.J. Jones, earned first-team All-ACC honors last season. Only Tez Walker caught more touchdown passes last season for the Tar Heels than Nesbit. He'll be a prime target for whoever emerges as UNC's starting quarterback. Johnson had four touchdown grabs among his 24 catches last season at Texas A&M.
QUARTERBACK
14 -Max Johnson
15 - Conner Harrell
12 - Jacolby Criswell
Extra points: Sam Howell and Drake Maye ain't walking through that door, to paraphrase the famous line from Rick Pitino. Johnson and Harrell have a head start in this race. They finished the spring with their competition for the starting job unresolved, though, and then Criswell made his boomeranging return to the Tar Heels, transferring back to UNC after a one-season stay at Arkansas. He spent three seasons (2020-22) backing up Howell and Maye at Carolina. The 6-foot-5 lefty Johnson has made stops at LSU and Texas A&M for two seasons apiece, and thrown for 5,852 yards and 47 touchdowns across his 30 college games. No returning quarterback on the power-conference level had a higher percentage of pass attempts under pressure last season than Johnson (47.3 percent of his throws were pressured). Harrell, now listed at 6-2, has grown an inch and a half on UNC's roster from last season. His strong arm and blazing speed are capable of producing big-impact plays, as evidenced by UNC's spring football game.
RUNNING BACK
28 - Omarion Hampton
24 -Darwin Barlow
4 - Caleb Hood
Extra points: The second-team All-American Hampton is coming off a prolific season, with his 1,504 rushing yards ranking fifth nationally in the FBS and second all-time on UNC's single-season chart. Across Carolina's football history, only Don McCauley (1,720 rushing yards in 1970) has produced more on the ground than Hampton churned out last season. He ran for 15 touchdowns last season, had 282 touches with Drake Maye operating at the controls — a whopping 253 carries and 29 catches — and has said he wants to develop the sort of every-down versatility that Christian McCaffrey possesses. Barlow, an affable interview subject, is a power back in the same downhill mold of Hampton. Both players are listed at 6-foot and 220 pounds. Barlow ran for more yards in two seasons at TCU (527 yards on 95 carries) than he did over the last three seasons at Southern Cal (466 yards on 86 carries). If the often-injured Hood can't stay upright, Davion Gause, Jordan Louie and Charleston French are the next candidates in line at running back for the Tar Heels.
RECEIVER
5 - J.J. Jones
1- Jordan Shipp
0 - Alex Taylor
RECEIVER
6 - Nate McCollum
7 - Christian Hamilton
9 - Javarius Green
RECEIVER
8 - Kobe Paysour
2 - Gavin Blackwell
3 -Chris Culliver
Extra points: Receiver is perhaps UNC's deepest position, and the Tar Heels have assembled a tremendous blend of veteran experience and promising youth to deploy here. UNC has a proven producer on the outside in Jones and underneath in the slot in McCollum, and interchangeability with Paysour, who can plug in across the board. Paysour, though, suffered broken feet at different junctures last season (left foot in October, right foot in December), and has had three foot surgeries. Jones and Blackwell didn't participate during the spring while recovering from surgeries. The true freshman Shipp feels like a star in the making, with the confidence and swagger to back it up, while Culliver possesses superb athleticism. They're part of a young crop that also includes first- and second-year targets such as Taylor, Hamilton, Green and Paul Billups II. As many as 10 receivers are in the competitive mix to crack Carolina's two-deep.
DEFENSIVE LINE
POWER END
10 - Des Evans
12 - Beau Atkinson
93 - Jacolbe Cowan
NOSE GUARD
98 - Kevin Hester Jr.
6-Joshua Harris
3 TECH
5 - Jahvaree Ritzie
4 - Travis Shaw
RUSH END
25 - Kaimon Rucker
40 -Thompson
Extra points: Rucker ranked fourth in the ACC in sacks (8½) and tackles for losses (15) last season, and checked in seventh nationally with 41 pressures, per Pro Football Focus (PFF). He's still working back to regaining full range of motion in the middle finger on his right hand, after surgery to repair a ruptured tendon in April — and he'll inform you of that when shaking his hand these days. UNC has quality depth at power end, where Evans and Atkinson, a pair of impressive physical specimens, certainly pass the eye test. Inside on the defensive line, the Ole Miss transfer Harris, who spent four seasons at NC State, was an important pickup this spring in the transfer portal. How the behemoth Shaw's development tracks, whether he continues ascending or trails off during training camp, could become one of the most significant keys for UNC's defense as a whole. "Travis Shaw looked like the Travis Shaw we've been waiting on," coach Mack Brown said in April, after the Tar Heels wrapped up their session of spring practices. Carolina is cross-training Shaw at both interior defensive line positions.
LINEBACKER
17 - Amare Campbell
30 -Michael Short
LINEBACKER
23 - Power Echols
34-Caleb LaVallee
Extra points: The mainstay Echols has piled up more than 100 tackles during each of the last two seasons, while shouldering particularly heavy workloads. His 899 snaps played last season ranked as the second-most among all ACC defenders, behind only UNC cornerback Marcus Allen (915 snaps), per PFF. With Cedric Gray moving on to the NFL after a stellar college career, the sophomore Campbell steps in alongside Echols. Gray made sure to note last season that he considers Campbell as a standout on the rise. Maybe more than any other, linebacker might the place where coach Mack Brown's continued sermons about rotating in more players really need to show up for the Tar Heels. Echols and Gray were tasked with logging tons of snaps across the last two seasons, just as Jeremiah Gemmel and Chazz Surratt did before them at the position.
DEFENSIVE BACK
CORNERBACK
29 - Marcus Allen
9- Tyrane Stewart
SAFETY
2 -Jakeen Harris
31 - Will Hardy
SAFETY
1 - Stick Lane
16- DeAndre Boykins
CORNERBACK
28 - Alijah Huzzie
11 -Ty Adams
STAR
21 - Kaleb Cost
15 - Tre Miller
0 - Ty White
Extra points: Cornerback feels like one of UNC's strongest spots, with the rangy Allen (team-best eight pass breakups last season) and the playmaking Huzzie (team-high three interceptions last season) forming a potentially dominant duo. The Tar Heels shifted Huzzie inside to the star position (or nickel) last August, when Boykins was lost to a torn knee ligament in training camp. Allen missed the spring due to knee surgery to repair a partial meniscus tear. Up the middle, safety resembles UNC's makeup at receiver in some ways. Veterans such as Lane (62 tackles last season, fourth on the team) and the NC State transfer Harris look like proven commodities, and Boykins and Hardy are plenty capable, while a youth movement is waiting in the wings further down the depth chart (true freshmen Malcolm Ziglar, Jaiden Patterson and Co.). The competition at "star" bears watching, where the Tar Heels will be relying on a first-time starter. Cost's two-sport double duty with the UNC baseball team was cut short by a stress reaction in his left foot this spring.
SPECIAL TEAMS
KICKER
98 - Noah Burnette
37-Liam Boyd
PUNTER
96 -Tom Maginness
97 - Lucas Osada
LONG SNAPPER
62 - Spencer Triplett
43 -Garrett Jordan
Extra points:Burnette returns as the clear starter at kicker, having regained the job by hitting 19-of-20 field goal attempts (first in the ACC in percentage, fourth nationally) to earn All-ACC honors. And he since has earned a scholarship, according to sources. Boyd is expected to resume the role of kickoff specialist, after supplying 49 touchbacks in 2023. Punter is a major question mark entering camp.Tom Maginness was forced out ofhis understudy role and into the punting job when Ben Kiernan suffered a season-ending injury, and proved not ready for prime time, averaging less than 40 yards per boot. Coach Mack Brown talked of pursuing a non-scholarship punter in the transfer portal, but UNC didn't add a portal punter to the roster. The true freshman Osada was an all-state and All-America punter in high school, and thus is a natural candidate to compete for the starting spot. In the return game, Alijah Huzzie (who returned a punt for a TD last season) and Nate McCollum areproven punt returners, while Chris Culliver (five returns, 105 yards) showed flashes as a kick returner late last season.