Why Richmond is a Good Litmus Test for North Carolina

On this episode of the Tar Heels Insider Podcast, beat writer Grant Chachere previews the upcoming matchup with Richmond.

To watch, check out the video below!

Here is a partial transcript from North Carolina defensive lineman D'Antre Robinson's presser on Sept. 11.

Experience learning from Bill Belichick so far…

My experience has been very good. You know, he coaches every single part of the game on the field goal block.That's one thing he's very big on that I haven't really, you know, looked that much into when I was younger. Now that I know, like, field goal block is a very important part of the game, so he's been coaching every part of the game, and I really love it.

How much pride do you take in clogging the lanes and allowing those up?

I take a lot of pride into it. I feel like from the first week to the second, I feel like we made a very big jump on that as a whole D-Line. We've been coming in to practice, really focused on striking and clogging up the lanes, like you said, for the linebackers. And we feel like we didn't do that good last game, and we made a big progress the second game. I feel like we're going to continue to do that throughout the season.

And now what's kind of the key to generating more pressure? I know you guys have been talking about that, but it seems like you guys got a little bit better.

Yeah, like I said, we had a bad taste in that mouth. The whole team came back with a better mindset, and we went and practiced and really striked the pads very hard all practice long, and we made that a big emphasis for that week, and we've been doing that ever since.

On Simulating Playing Against Richmond QB Kyle Wickersham …

Prepare for him. You know, you've got to focus on tackling. Tackling is a big part of the game this week because he's a big quarterback. He's not going to go down easy, so we've been focused on tackling a lot this week as well.

You talked about freeing up those linebackers. How much of the scheme is designed for you and the other linebackers take on those blockers and free up those linebackers versus how much of it is you guys getting penetration in that field accounting for us?

Well, according to that, it's just like you've got to, you know, play the game. You've got to take what the offense gives you and everything like that. So there's not really no scheme or anything like that, but when it comes to double teams and stuff like that, like I said, we've been working on that very hard, working on striking pads and striking the blockers and everything, so the linebackers can't be free. There's not really any scheme. We just got to do that.

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