{"id":8143,"date":"2015-04-23T22:19:46","date_gmt":"2015-04-24T02:19:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/capitalsportsnc.com\/?p=8143"},"modified":"2015-07-07T19:31:40","modified_gmt":"2015-07-07T23:31:40","slug":"fedora-talks-about-uncs-spring-football","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/capitalsportsnc.com\/?p=8143","title":{"rendered":"Fedora talks about UNC’s spring football"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"UNC's<\/a>
UNC’s Larry Fedora.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

LARRY FEDORA: We had, I thought, a
\nvery productive spring. We really wanted to work
\non the fundamentals and techniques that we were
\ngoing to need, especially in a new defensive
\nscheme. We wanted to continue developing depth
\nin our offensive line and defensive line and at other
\npositions so that we could have some good
\ncompetition, and I think — I’d say for the most part,
\nwe got all those things accomplished.<\/p>\n

Q. Just wanted to ask you about
\nquarterback Marquise
\nWilliams, his rehab,
\nwhere he’s at, kind of how everything is going
\nwith him as he progresses forward.
\nLARRY FEDORA: Yeah, I’d say things are
\ngoing very well. They tell us that he’s ahead of
\nschedule, and I think when he had his last checkup
\nin Nashville, they told him that these next four
\nweeks was a very crucial time because he feels
\nlike he’s 100 percent, and so this is when they see
\nmost of the recurring injuries, and so we have to be
\nvery careful with him right now. He’s got to be —
\nstick to the plan. But we anticipate him being back
\nhere full speed in just a few weeks.<\/p>\n

Q. What was it like for you to go
\nthrough spring without him? Were you able to
\nassess a lot about the offense despite the fact
\nthat he wasn’t there?
\nLARRY FEDORA: Oh, yeah, yeah. I
\nmean, what we did was Mitch Trubisky ran with the
\n1s so he got a lot of reps, a lot of meaningful reps,
\nand then you have Caleb Henderson and Anthony
\nRatliff that were there that also got reps with the
\n2s. So I thought it was beneficial. We made the
\nmost of it. I would have loved for ‘Quise to be
\nthere so he could have gotten a bunch of reps, but
\nhe has the most reps of anybody in the offense,
\nand so if it had to happen to anybody, I think it was good for him.<\/p>\n

Q. Kind of piggy-backing on the last
\nquestion, was Marquise’s situation something
\nthat happened during the season or was it
\nsomething that occurred after the season was
\nover? And given the fact that Trubisky has
\ngotten so much more work in spring practice,
\ndo you anticipate the quarterback situation
\nbeing similar to last year or do you see Mitch
\ngetting a little bit more reps during game
\nsituations?
\nLARRY FEDORA: Yeah, it did happen to
\nhim at a point in the season. I couldn’t tell you
\nexactly the time that it happened, but as you
\nwatched his production as the season went on, I
\nthink the wear and tear on the injury, it hampered
\nhim a little bit.
\nI think right now we’ve got some great
\ncompetition right there,
\nwhich we’re trying to
\nestablish, and we are. We’ve got some depth
\nthere. Marquise is our starting quarterback, and
\nI’m looking forward to watching those guys
\ncompete in fall camp, but Marquise, I anticipate
\nMarquise taking that first snap against South
\nCarolina and getting after it.<\/p>\n

Q. I know you guys when it comes to
\nrecruiting have been affected by all the
\nuncertainty with the NCAA investigation.
\nWondering what you’ve been telling kids, just
\nkind of about that in terms of the timeline of it,
\nand are you familiar with any kind of — anything
\ngoing on with that in terms of the timeline of it?
\nLARRY FEDORA: No, really, I mean, to
\nbe honest with you, all we do is try to tell kids that
\nwe’re at the mercy of the NCAA. Whenever it
\nhappens, it happens. We don’t have a timeline.
\nNo one has given us any information.
\nI feel pretty confident in what — I know I
\nfeel confident in what we’re doing since we’ve been
\nhere, so right now we’re just — we’ll just have to
\nwait and see what they say.<\/p>\n

Q. What, if anything, can you glean in
\nterms of the season opener from the game two
\nyears ago in Columbia, and can you really
\nevaluate any of it just because there’s been so
\nmany changes on both sides of the ball for the
\nGamecocks?
\nLARRY FEDORA: Well, they’re still a very
\nstrong football team, there’s no doubt about it, and
\nwe’ll find out where we match up and how much
\nimprovement we’ve made as a football team and in
\nrecruiting and in developing and all those things.
\nThere will be some guys that play in the game that
\nplayed in it a couple years ago, and hopefully
\nthose guys are — because we
\nplayed a lot of young
\nguys in that game, and so hopefully those guys
\nhave grown up and they’re
\nbetter football players
\nat this time.<\/p>\n

Q. With Gene Chizik coming aboard as
\ndefensive coordinator, what has this spring
\ntold you about the impact he’s going to have
\non your defense, both him and his scheme?
\nLARRY FEDORA: Well, obviously Gene is
\ngoing to have a tremendous impact on our
\ndefense. He’s running it. We have a completely
\nnew scheme, and I would say with the additions of
\nJohn Papuchis and Charlton Warren and the
\nthings that they’ve brought also from Nebraska, it’s
\na great mixture between the two.
\nBut Gene is in charge of it. I mean, he’s
\ninstalling his style of coachi
\nng, his style of way, the
\nway he wants those guys to play. Yeah, I’m just
\nexcited about seeing the end result once the
\nseason gets here.<\/p>\n

Q. You’ve got a great core coming
\nback, but one place where you’ve got a little
\ngap are your two kickers. I wonder if you can
\ntell us what you saw in spring, who looked
\ngood, and how you see that going forward.
\nLARRY FEDORA: Well, I thought both of
\nthem progressed. I mean, we got three guys really
\ncompeting for that job, for the place kicking. I think
\nWeiler will definitely be our kickoff guy this next
\nyear. He did a tremendous job last year, and he’ll
\ncontinue to do that this next year. But he is
\ncompeting with the other two guys this spring. I
\nthought they all made progress. I thought they
\nwere all better than we were during the season, so
\nyou know, I anticipate us getting much more
\nproduction out of that position.<\/p>\n

Q. Is there one particular area on
\ndefense you think you made the most
\nimprovement this spring looking at it from last
\nyear?
\nLARRY FEDORA: Yeah, I would say our
\nsecondary. You know, just the things that we’ve
\nchanged in our secondary. Also those guys
\nhave — they’ve all got a year
\nof experience in, and
\nalso as far as just playing and being out there, but
\nthey’ve adapted well to the new scheme and the
\nnew techniques that Gene and Charl want them to
\nplay back there, so I would say coming out of
\nspring, I’d say that would have been the most
\nproductive area.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

LARRY FEDORA: We had, I thought, a very productive spring. We really wanted to work on the fundamentals and techniques that we were going to…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[79,80],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8143","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-featured-stories","category-north-carolina-tar-heels","wpcat-79-id","wpcat-80-id"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/capitalsportsnc.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8143","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/capitalsportsnc.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/capitalsportsnc.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/capitalsportsnc.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/capitalsportsnc.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=8143"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/capitalsportsnc.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8143\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8391,"href":"https:\/\/capitalsportsnc.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8143\/revisions\/8391"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/capitalsportsnc.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8143"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/capitalsportsnc.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=8143"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/capitalsportsnc.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=8143"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}