UNC Football: Larry Fedoras Balanced Spread Attack

North Carolina Tar Heels new head football coach Larry Fedora is bringing with him a unique style of spread offense to Chapel Hill.  A “fast break” type of style constituted on an almost exclusively on a no-huddle, fast paced offense who’s goal is to run as many plays as possible while slowing down the opposing defense in the process.

Credit: Sam Sharpe-US PRESSWIRE

In a recent interview, Fedora shared his thoughts on what makes his version of the spread different from other versions of the offense.

I’ve thought a lot about that and I would say probably the biggest thing is we’re very balanced. That’s one thing that we take a lot of pride in, is that we’ve been able to run the football and throw it out of this style of offense. And most teams do one of the other. And I’ve always believed that if you can spread the field and you can do both, that teams can’t take both away from you. And they may be able to stop one, and they can make you throw it, and they can make you run it and I’m OK with that. I don’t care how we get it. But a good example is the last year I was at Oklahoma State, we averaged 243 rushing and 243 passing at the end of the season after 12 games, or 13 games. But that’s been pretty much [standard] – except for the first year at Oklahoma State and the first year at Middle Tennessee – other than that we’ve been very balanced throughout an entire season.

Those are encouraging comments for Tar Heel football fans.  Especially those eager to see star running back Giovanni Bernard repeat his great freshman season.  If the spring game is any indication, the Heels plan on running the football and keeping Bernard as the focal point of the offense.

With the loss of Dwight Jones, the wide receiver group is thin.  The personnel on the roster make it almost impossible for the Heels to become a pass happy type of football team.  Looking at Fedoras history he has always got a lot out of his RB and in my opinion he has yet to have one as good as Bernard.

It will be interesting to see if Fedora can actually make Bernard more of a weapon in 2012 than he was last season in the new offense.  Bernard will be a big part of the game plan both as a rusher and a receiver.  What type of season do you think Gio will have in 2012?