Heel Tough Blog: Tar Heels Assistant Coach Officially Tabbed as Team's TE Coach

@UNCFootball- Twitter

The Tar Heels have been looking to make a hire at tight end coach after the firing of offensive coordinator/tight ends coach Freddie Kitchens earlier this summer. It appears that as of Sunday, the team has found a replacement for this job in the form of a guy that has been with the program since 2022.

As first reported by Inside Carolina, offensive assistant Caleb Pickrell, who has been coaching the tight ends so far in spring practice, is officially listed as the team’s tight ends coach on his personal page on the athletic department’s official page.

Pickrell, a graduate of Stillman College in Alabama, joined the Tar Heels back in 2022 under previous coach Mack Brown and remained a part of the staff through the transition last offseason. Pickrell originally served as an assistant offensive line coach back in 2022, the same position that he held the previous year on UCF’s staff, but made the shift to an assistant tight ends coach in 2023. He would hold that same position for each of the next three years, including last year under new head coach Bill Belichick.

This was an expected move, especially with him handling the duties during spring practice these last few weeks, and could prove to be a successful one based off of the track record of the tight end room in the last two seasons of the Mack Brown tenure. Now the question becomes whether or not the team will officially make Billy Miller the special teams coordinator following Mike Priefer’s dismissal earlier this offseason.