UNC football pressing corners Marcus Allen, Alijah Huzzie into action for 2024 season

As football terms go, it’s pretty basic: press coverage.

As a defensive back, you line up close to the wide receiver at the line of scrimmage, bump him after the snap, try to knock him off stride, try to blow up any quick-hitting pass play. Try to rattle him, be a disrupter.

North Carolina plans to do a lot more of that this season under the Tar Heels’ new defensive coordinator, Geoff Collins. The Heels have the players to do it, they believe, and they will do it more often, especially with Marcus Allen and Alijah Huzzie the starters at cornerback.

“When you say press coverage it’s easy to say, harder to execute, right?” UNC defensive backs coach Charlton Warren said this week. “It’s an easy concept — ‘You get those cats.’”

But there’s a lot of work that needs to be done on the technical and fundamental side, Warren said. A lot of practice repetitions. It requires talent, yes, but comes through development.

Allen playing bigger

Take Allen, for example.

The 6-foot-2 junior has the speed and the instincts of a good cover corner. He has experience, starting all 13 games as a sophomore last season and playing more than 900 snaps.

“He’s more poised, knows what’s coming next,” Warren said.

Allen also has something new this year: 11 added pounds of muscle.

UNC coach Mack Brown, noting Allen’s added weight and physique, said he looked “pretty” when he saw him on the field.

“I do feel more explosive with the added weight in my arms and legs,” said Allen, a former 4-star recruit out of Marietta, Georgia. “I like hitting, too, so that should help me. I’m more explosive and I’m ready to play.”

Allen missed spring practice because of a knee injury that was not football related. He said he got bigger, in part, by knocking back 3,000-calorie protein shakes — bananas, peanut butter, honey, creatine, condensed milk, you name it — every day.

Allen said he came back for the fall at 182 pounds, no longer the skinny guy wearing No. 29.

“Any of us, when we go to the gym and look in the mirror and see what we like, we have a lot more confidence in ourselves,” Warren said. “I think Marcus has looked in the mirror and likes what he sees and he plays with that swagger.

“When you play with swagger, which you must do to cover a cat in this league, it makes all the difference.”

Huzzie moving from star to corner

Huzzie transferred to UNC last year from East Tennessee State expecting to line up at cornerback. Instead, the 5-10, 195-pound graduate student wound up seeing a lot of time at the star position, a hybrid of defensive back and linebacker in its responsibilities.

Huzzie started 30 games in four years at ETSU and was arguably the best defensive back in FCS in 2022 – a first-team All-America. He was just the kind of player the Tar Heels wanted at corner.

With Kaleb Cost set to take over at star this season, Huzzie should be set at cornerback opposite Allen.

“I think we can be lock-down corners on both sides of the field,” Huzzie said.

Allen put it another way: “I’m going to do my thing on my side and let him do his thing on his side.”

Backing up Allen and Huzzie: Tre Miller and Tyrane Stewart, a junior-college transfer from Mississippi.

Tar Heels leaning on depth

Brown has said the Tar Heels, who open the 2024 season Aug. 29 at Minnesota, will get more players on the field and use its depth. It also will allow more starters, Brown said, to be used on special teams — Huzzie was UNC’s top punt returner last fall.

“You’ve got to find ways to give them relief at times so a team doesn’t know, 60 plays a game, they’re on an island and to attack them,’ Warren said of his cornerbacks.

Nor will it be straight man D with the corners. The Heels may line up with with a press defense look but only as a disguise, Warren said, the cornerbacks slipping into other secondary coverages once the ball is snapped.

The Heels ended the 2023 season 8-5 after a 30-10 loss to West Virginia in the Duke’s Mayo Bowl in Charlotte. UNC allowed a 75-yard touchdown pass on the first play from scrimmage, freshman receiver Traylon Ray beating cornerback Armani Chatman on a crossing route to get open deep.

UNC was 13th in the ACC in passing defense in 2023, allowing 245.3 yards a game and 16 touchdowns. Collins was brought in to change that.

Warren, UNC’s assistant head coach for defense, believes his group of DB’s are ready to accept that challenge. The goal: better coverage, better tackling, more big plays.

“They’ve embraced it,” Warren said. “So much of football is on the mental side. It’s a guy saying, ‘I buy into winning my box, and I know that every single time it’s going to be on me to do it.’”