UNC Football: Highly Ranked Tar Heel Recruits Pave Way For Redemption Day

The North Carolina Tar Heels have redemption in hand. Despite the early wavering recruits, and some lost recruits, UNC football managed to avoid most of the daggers and come away with some top recruits and a top 15 recruiting class with some really impressive national stars.

True, the class would undoubtedly have been much stronger if the Tar Heels did not face two NCAA investigations that could lead to sanctions. However, most bet that sanctions will not be too heavy, and that it is far more worthwhile to be Carolina Blue than almost any other color even next year and especially for the NFL from a defense perspective.

So here are the latest 2011 signees still early on National Signing Day. Both are defensive players.

DT Delvon Simmons

So far, the No. 1 surprise, perhaps of the entire group signing this Signing Day, is Delvon Simmons. Many may have believed the Tar Heels had a chance, but most of those were bloggers with more optimism than your typical college fan.

Rated the number three defensive tackle by Scout, a late January 2011 USC visit had convinced some he would pick USC over Oregon, Texas Tech and Pittsburgh. While he had indicated interest, UNC was far off of the map for the most astute predictors.

The Delvon Simmons signing is critical to continuing the dominance and excellence of the Tar Heels defense. The Tar Heels have many great defensive players, including Julius Peppers who helped with recruiting as much as he could this year.

The Tar Heels likely would have had the best defense in the nation last season if it had not been for the antics of some of its top players that led to the NCAA investigation. One of these players is certain to go in the first round of the upcoming NFL draft. Another two or three could also go very high in the draft.

OLB Keeon Virgile

Virgile is rated a two-star outside linebacker by Scout. The University of Nebraska was the competition, but the weather this January ended any thought of moving so far north to play football. While unclear the level of talent, Virgile has benefited from a huge weight gain over the past year, what appears to have been more than forty pounds. Florida would have been interested in him, but for tight end.

Look for Virgile to be much better than anticipated as he gets used to his weight and improves his strength.

This article will be updated with links to new articles if there are any other important signed players. For now, we have one huge surprise.

Stay tuned for more!