UNC Football: Five x-factors for Carolina in 2017
By Alec Lasley
Wide Receivers
I touched on this in a recent article about who could be a breakout wide receiver this year but let’s dig deeper into the lack of experience this year for the Tar Heels receiving core.
Carolina lost six out of its top eight receivers last year, bringing back Austin Proehl and Thomas Jackson.
The Tar Heels also have two tight-ends in Carl Tucker and Brandon Fritts who combined for 15 receptions for 189 yards and two touchdowns. These stats are a little deflated too as Fritts missed the first half of the season with an injury.
The one major question mark with the returning wide receiving core is that almost all of them are underneath route runners, so who will be the big deep threat option?
Two names are senior wide-out Jordan Cunningham and RS sophomore Juvall Mollette.
Cunningham is a big 6-foot-2 transfer from Vanderbilt who never really found much playing time in his first season for Carolina last year. Mollette redshirted his freshman year and battled injuries all last year.
Mollette is 6-foot-4 and though hasn’t seen any live action yet, had seven receptions for 100 yards and three touchdowns in the spring game this year.
He was considered the No. 32 wide-out in the 2015 class by Rivals.
They both possess great size and good speed to be that deep ball threat, just to keep the defense honest.
Though I said that potential starting quarterback Brandon Harris isn’t a gunslinger, every offense needs a middle-to-deep tier route runner to stretch the defense, and in Larry Fedora’s offense, there is even more of an emphasis on it.
We know Proehl will be a major possession wide-out and could even come close to Ryan Switzer’s Carolina single season record of 96 receptions which included 13, 14, and 16 reception games, but there are still a lot of question marks surrounding the rest of the wideouts.