UNC freshman Caleb Hood has been a pleasant surprise in the Tar Heels’ backfield
In an 8-part series, the News & Observer and Herald Sun will be examining UNC’s football depth chart, position by position, as the season opener on Sept. 3 in Blacksburg, Virginia, draws near.
North Carolina freshman running back Caleb Hood is not one of those high school quarterbacks who was asked and begrudgingly made a position switch once he started college.
Quite the contrary: Hood hated playing quarterback, even though he was a four-year starter at Richmond Senior High School in Rockingham.
He only did it because his dad asked him to — once — on his little league team. The change, oddly enough, launched another career as well. Jakolbe Baldwin was at quarterback and he moved to wide receiver, the position he now plays for N.C. State. Hood was at running back, and he moved to quarterback.
“We weren’t very effective at receiver at that time, and then we put Jakolbe there and he fell into place,” said Errol Hood, who coached his son’s 12-year old team. “We put Caleb at quarterback, he fell into place and put another guy running back, he fell into place. We became the No. 1 one team in North Carolina and from that point, Caleb never went back to running back.”
It almost didn’t happen with the Tar Heels either.
Errol Hood was recruited by UNC coach Mack Brown in the mid 90s and sat out as a redshirt during Brown’s final season before he took the job at Texas. Errol Hood also starred at quarterback in high school before becoming a defensive back for Heels from 1998-2001.
Caleb Hood, who was being recruited as an athlete, initially figured he’d duplicate his father’s path by becoming a defensive back when he reached Chapel Hill. But Errol Hood challenged his son’s thought process.
“He was just happy to be a Tar Heel and I was like, ‘Look, we’re not gonna sit on that, what position do you want to play?’” Errol Hood said. “He said, ‘I want to play running back.’ Then that’s the position, we’re gonna tell Mack Brown we want to play. And if they want him as a Tar Heel, that’s the position that he’ll get.”
It’s gone better than either father or son imagined. Caleb Hood enrolled early at UNC in order to participate in spring practice. Physically, his 5-foot-11, 230-pound frame put him in a position to compete right away. By learning the system in the spring and summer, it helped him get an early start when the team reported on Aug. 4 for fall camp.
UNC running backs coach Larry Porter said Hood was a, “pleasant surprise,” who is “trending up in a very, very fast way.”
“He’s a young man, from day one, he came in and completely understood what he needs to do to put himself in position to play, which is learn the offense,” Porter said. “He was very, very aggressive in doing so and so as the spring began and got going, you could tell that he had really been studying because his mistakes were very very minimal.”
Carolina signed Ty Chandler, a graduate transfer from Tennessee, to bring experience to the position and be the starter. But the second back in the rotation has been a competition with D.J. Jones, Josh Henderson, Elijah Green and British Brooks clamoring for the spot.
Midway through fall camp, Brown said Hood emerged as the the No. 2 back. Brown said with Hood’s size, they knew he could run with power, but the finesse parts of the game they weren’t sure he would pick up so fast.
“The two concerns we had were pass protection, which is getting better, it’s still not there,” Brown said. “And you would expect a quarterback to struggle with pass protection. And we thought he might have some trouble carrying the ball. But he’s had really, really good ball security. He’s got tremendous hands out of the backfield.”
So long as the production is there, Carolina would prefer to use two backs in the way it used Michael Carter and Javonte Williams to carry the ball last season. Both surpassed 1,000 yards rushing, and because they carried the ball equally, neither got worn down late in the season. It was the opposite, both had their career-highs rushing in their final collegiate game combining for more than 500 yards against Miami.
It’s not realistic to expect Chandler, Hood and whomever may earn carries for the Heels to duplicate what Carter and Williams did last season. But Porter believes Hood is up for the challenge.
“He’s gained confidence as he’s got more experience from each run, each protection, each passing concept,” Porter said. “And I think that going forward, from a future standpoint that he’s going to be a joy to watch, I really do believe that and we’re very, very happy to have him.”
Probable UNC running backs depth chart
| Running back | ||
| STARTER | ||
| Ty Chandler (GR) | 6-0 | 210 |
| RESERVES | ||
| Caleb Hood (FR) | 5-11 | 230 |
| D.J. Jones (SO) | 5-10 | 205 |
Previous UNC preview installments
Defensive line
Linebackers
Defensive backs
Wide receivers
Special teams
Other Triangle ACC previews
Running backs
Defensive line
Linebackers
Defensive backs
Special teams
Wide receivers
This story was originally published August 29, 2021 at 5:25 AM with the headline "UNC freshman Caleb Hood has been a pleasant surprise in the Tar Heels’ backfield."