As the Tar Heels get ready to hit the home stretch of the 2020 season, another round attrition has hit the program. Since Sunday, the Tar Heels have had three players step away from the team and either announce their intentions to transfer or their retirements from football.
Sophomore linebacker Matthew Flint was the first player to make an announcement when he entered his name into the transfer portal on Sunday. Flint was the first Tar Heel to announce he was opting out of the 2020 season back in early August and has been helping the coaching staff so far this season. He ends his Tar Heel football career with four total tackles and a 0.5 tackle for loss in just four career games with the Tar Heels, in large part due to a broken leg suffered in 2019 that ended his season just two games in.
Junior cornerback Tre Shaw joined him in the transfer portal on Wednesday morning. It announced back in early August that he would miss the entirety of the 2020 season due to a season-ending injury suffered during the offseason. In his career, Shaw was active in 22 games for the Tar Heels and in each of the past two seasons was a key part of the Tar Heels special teams coverage units. Shaw’s career was an injury-riddled one, especially last year where he missed seven games due to a lower body injury. The former 3✮ recruit was expected to be a member of the special teams unit again this season while competing to fill one of the depth spots in the team’s loaded secondary. He finishes his career with 19 total tackles.
Redshirt freshman offensive lineman Ty Murray’s career is also over at Carolina as of Wednesday. Inside Carolina was the first to report this morning that the interior offensive lineman, who was in a battle for the starting center job prior to an undisclosed injury put him out indefinitely. This morning, the football program announced that Murray was taking a medical hardship, ending his football career after just a year and a half. In his time in a Tar Heel uniform, Murray played 20 snaps, the bulk of which came in the final two games of the regular season against Mercer and NC State. The expectation from many was that Murray would take over the starting center job once Brian Anderson departed, but the Tar Heel will now need to find a new interior lineman to handle those duties going forward. True freshman Jonathan Adorno was the backup center for the early part of this season, but it appears that the staff has chosen to lean on veteran walk-on Quiron Johnson as the backup to Anderson after Adorno’s struggles at the position in the limited reps he’s seen. Unfortunately, there are no clear answers here for the future and Anderson’s current injury makes this a big concern for the rest of the 2020 season, as well.
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