North Carolina Tar Heels: Nazair Jones is the Best NFL Prospect
The North Carolina Tar Heels have perhaps the best story in the draft with Nazair Jones.
April 8th marks the Spring Football Game of the North Carolina Tar Heels. All of the news around the team has had little to do with the guys actually playing on that day. Instead we are watching the NFL Draft as Mitch Trubisky’s stock ‘drops’ because teams might go somewhere other than quarterback with their top five pick. The next Carolina quarterback that we want to see is Brandon Harris and he will not be on campus until May or June or even August.
The other draft eligible guys got their attention at the combine. T.J. Logan ran a good forty. Elijah Hood, Mack Hollins, Ryan Switzer, and others tried to show something that would attract a potential NFL team.
With all that, I was surprised that the Tar Heel getting the most ink is defensive tackle Nazair Jones. Jones entered the draft after his junior year and did seem like the most competent defensive lineman on the team the past two years. Steady, but not normally setting the world on fire. 6’5” and capable of playing Batman to some throws, sometimes the creator of a multi-sack game – this was Jones. He already sounds better now than I fully remember.
More from North Carolina Tar Heels
- NC Colleges Provide Coronavirus Results from Athletic Departments
- UNC Football gets Commitment from Top Cornerback
- Four North Carolina players selected in first round of MLB Draft
- UNC Destroyed by Coach Duggs and Tennessee in NCAA Football 14
- UNC Basketball: Former Tar Heel star calls out Roy Williams
Jones is not getting press because he is racing up the draft boards. Instead he is getting noticed because he has a very specific and rare condition that no one at the North Carolina hospitals had heard of when he checked in as a patient as a teenager. It already existed, and it was called Complex Regional Pain Syndrome, which means the person who identified it wasn’t comfortable enough to name it after themselves.
Jones likely didn’t care what it was called. He just wanted to move his legs as the pain jumped around the extremes of his body before leaving him immobile. It also did not make the news any better that this disease generally affected women in their forties. It took time for him to walk again under treatment, and the star high school football player saw his scholarship offers disappear.
More from Old North Banter
- Carolina Panthers: Secondary battles to watch in training camp 2020
- Carolina Panthers: 2020 training camp kicks off on Tuesday
- NC Colleges Provide Coronavirus Results from Athletic Departments
- Court alleges Zion’s Stepfather received $400k
- UNC Football gets Commitment from Top Cornerback
Jones got one more chance, a work out with coach Larry Fedora. According to reports from Eric Adelson of Yahoo Sports, Fedora was unimpressed. But Coach Fedora took a longer view of the issue, somewhat interesting since the school was under scholarship reduction around that time. He agreed to bring Jones in, but Jones would have to redshirt. What followed was one of the easier decision Jones had had to make.
Color me clueless. I just noticed that the Heels had this Jones guy who seemed to be developing pretty nicely as a sophomore. Jones morphed in a bruising tackle under the Gene Chizik system and now stands at three hundred pounds. The disease issues are hopefully past and Jones will likely be financially secure once the draft process is over.
What is it about the Tar Heels and linemen with strange medical phenomena? It does not seem too long ago (now about seven years or so) that the team brought in a defensive end named Robert Quinn, who had undergone brain surgery. Quinn is currently with the Rams and has been to the Pro Bowl.
Next: The North Carolina Tar Heels Final Four Bracket Challenge
Good luck to Jones and his professional future, we certainly will all be rooting for him.