(Photo: Kevin Roy/TH247, 247Sports)
The North Carolina football team held its first scrimmage of training camp on Sunday morning.
This is where the rubber meets the road, so to speak.
UNC Coach Bill Belichick said multiple times in the two press conferences since camp began that the true evaluation would commence, especially for the big guys on both lines of scrimmage.
“That’s their game. It’s contact, it’s leverage, it’s footwork position,” Belichick said last Wednesday. “These guys line up this far (a few feet) from each other and (clap) it all happens pretty quickly. And without pads and without full contact, it’s kind of hard to see exactly how that’s going until you get to that point.
“With receivers, defensive backs, things like that, you don’t have those kinds of collisions, Power neutralizes speed, speed can offset power. There is a better evaluation of that than there is with the big guys.
“Again, so much of interior offensive and defensive line play is based on pad level and leverage. And until you actually are going, it’s kind of hard to tell exactly how it’s going to turn out. Once everything is on, then it’s a lot easier to see.”
So, in talking with multiple sources in and around the program, here is a detailed report about how things are going, notably with the full contact on Saturday, depth chart jockeying, and a key injury: