UNC running back D.J. Jones leaving crowded RB room for secondary
If there is one roster spot UNC is far from a shortage in players, it’s the running back room.
The Heels have eight running backs listed on the official 2023 roster. Four of those eight enjoyed 100-yard seasons last year, led by 558 from Elijah Green.
UNC will be without D.J. Jones – one of those 100-yard rushers – in the halfback department.
Jones isn’t off the team – he’s instead making a position switch. Last week, Inside Carolina reported that Jones is making the switch to defensive back.
This will be an entirely different ballgame for Jones, who never played defense growing up. He likely wouldn’t be getting many carries and wanted to stay at UNC, so he approached head coach Mack Brown in January about the position switch.
“I feel like I could do more for the team than what I was doing last year,” Jones told 247Sports’ Jeremiah Holloway on Thursday. “I feel like I can do that at any other position than what they had me doing last year. I just told Mack that if there’s any other place that he could see me playing, that I would do that for the team.”
The Heels have enjoyed some success from position switching in the past, most recently with now-linebacker Chazz Surratt, who came to Chapel Hill as a record-breaking quarterback from East Lincoln High School.
Surratt was UNC’s starting quarterback for seven games in 2017, then played just one game at QB the following year. He switched to linebacker in 2019 – earning a First Team All-ACC selection. In 2020, his final college season, Surratt was a Butkus Award (top linebacker in college football) semifinalist.
Surratt is now a linebacker with the New York Jets. He’ll look to find his way into a crowded linebacking corps that includes Quincy Williams and former Alabama star C.J. Mosley.
In Chapel Hill, Jones will be trying to help a Carolina defense that, among FBS teams, allowed the sixth-most yards to opponents (5.697).
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