UNC Football: Aaron Crawford’s injury leaves a big hole on defense

The UNC Football team saw one of their top defensive players, Aaron Crawford, go down with a significant knee injury this week in practice.

The first game of the UNC football season is less than 10 days away and the team suffered a big blow to their defense. According to Tar Heel Illustrated, Aaron Crawford suffered a knee injury during Tuesday’s practice.

Andrew Jones wrote that there has been no time table set but it appears he will likely miss the first couple of games, possibly as many as three games. If he misses the first three games of the season he will miss road games against California, Eastern Carolina University, and a home game against 21st ranked University of Central Florida.

This is a major blow to the Tar Heel’s defense as Crawford was expected to anchor this defensive line. We had recently picked Crawford as the team’s defensive player of the year.

Crawford has played 24 games the past two seasons and has 71 total tackles, 6.5 tackles for a loss and four sacks.

The hope was that Crawford would be able to help improve a run defense that finished 112th out of 130 FBS teams in rushing yards allowed per game (213.2 yards).

The question now becomes how to do they replace the void left by Crawford’s absence? Fortunately for the Tar Heels, the defensive tackle position was one of their more experienced position groups.

The team will likely turn to Jeremiah Clarke or Jason Strowbridge, a redshirt senior or a redshirt junior respectively.

However, as Jones notes this is not the only injury the team is dealing with as the other projected starting defensive tackle, Jalen Dalton, is dealing with injuries of his own. It remains to be seen if he will be ready for next week’s game against Cal.