UNC football hopes its new offensive line coach can make a quick, seamless transition
Jack Bicknell was preparing practice schedules and game plans for Louisville’s spring football drills a week ago. Monday, he was in a North Carolina polo shirt explaining why Mack Brown is the one coach, and UNC the one school, that could have pried him from the Cardinals.
UNC officially introduced Bicknell as the new offensive line coach just one week after Stacy Searles left to take the same position at Georgia. Searles was the Bulldogs’ offensive line coach and run game coordinator from 2007-10.
“When he was out there Saturday coaching them, he didn’t even drop off for the offense,” Brown said. “He was throwing plays out and formations out and the kids just had a smile on their face because they went from being panicked on (last) Monday morning to really excited (Saturday) afternoon.”
The timing of the coaching change was reason to feel anxious, specifically because it was the offensive line. The Heels led the ACC in sacks allowed last season, and in allowing tackles for loss.
Brown said he pondered whether or not to move spring practices back, but ultimately decided against it.
The Heels proceeded with Kevin Donnalley, director of the Koman Game Plan for Success, serving as the temporary offensive line coach. Donnalley played 13 years as an NFL offensive lineman, including a stint with the Carolina Panthers.
Bicknell, who has coached in the NFL and won a Super Bowl with the New York Giants in 2011, took over Saturday and is trying to make the transition as seamless as possible.
“It’s really not that difficult as far as knowing what to do, I mean, I’ve done this forever,” Bicknell said. “I know exactly how I coach it, I know exactly what works. I’ve studied it years and years and years so that part of it’s not difficult.”
Bicknell said the toughest part was just knowing the players on a personal level, as in building relationships; and on a personnel level, as in knowing strengths and weaknesses and who should be getting more repetitions.
“It has been a whirlwind now and it takes more than one day of really looking at them and studying them,” Bickell said. “But I do have familiarity with the offense. Sometimes we have to catch a little things, but a lot of this stuff I was able to kind of hit the ground running.”
Bicknell was teaching inside and outside zone blocking schemes at Louisville, which he won’t be doing much of at Carolina. But he’s not a novice when it comes to the Heels offense. He coached with offensive coordinator Phil Longo at Mississippi and said that experience has already helped him at UNC.
“The fact that I was with Phil for two years, I mean, it came back to me like nothing, of course,” Bicknell said. “And I like coach said, I really believe in this offense. I think it’s the best offense out there and I’m excited to be a part of it.”
This story was originally published March 8, 2022 at 6:17 AM.