Benjamin Hall Rises As Leader Among Backs As UNC Commits to Power Run Game

CHAPEL HILL, N.C. — There’s a sense of rejuvenation across the North Carolina football program this spring. Running back Benjamin Hall, one of the few veteran returners with experience, senses the energy first-hand and believes players and coaches have taken last year’s failures in stride. 

“Everyone feels like, even just putting the record aside, we’re a few plays away from winning some more games,” Hall said last Tuesday. “(There is) a better understanding of how college football works now for the staff that was here last year, because a lot of them had their first time dipping their foot in the water.” 

Over spring practice, Hall has emerged as the leader in a young running back room with a reshuffled UNC offense and a new coordinator in Bobby Petrino. Positioning himself as the connective tissue between last year’s growing pains and a more confident 2026 program, Hall foresees growth for the Tar Heels in year two under Bill Belichick. 

What excites Hall most about playing under Petrino is the 65-year-old’s commitment to the power run game. He says Petrino has done a good job of laying the groundwork for quarterbacks, offensive linemen and running backs to be on the same page for a successful rushing attack.   

And given the depth at running back with Demon June, Jaylen McGill, Charleston French and Kaleb Jackson from LSU, UNC will have no shortage of guys who are willing to embrace a run-heavy game plan. 

“I’ve always believed that a good team has to be able to run the ball when they need to and when they want to,” Hall said. “We have someone who wants to run the football here, and I think that’s huge for a guy like me and for the team in general.” 

Hall also described the greater freedom the offense feels it has under Petrino. Last season, the play-calling was cut and dry, but this year, he says the quarterbacks have more freedom to change the play at the line of scrimmage if they identify that the call won’t work before the snap. 

This has brought a sense of “mental gymnastics,” as Hall described it, with new quarterbacks working with old and new staff, and synergy on audibles being a slow but steady process throughout the spring. 

“You need to walk before you run,” Petrino said last Tuesday. “The progression on how you teach, and we’ve tried to do a good job with that in our installation, and slow down a little bit. And there’s a couple days where we didn’t move on to the next day’s install because we had to come back and get it right before we were ready to move on.”

As a veteran in a position group without seniors, Hall has made it his mission to earn credibility with younger players and transfer portal additions within the offense. He’s learned from Jordan Shipp and Leroy Jackson, fellow veteran leaders on the team, about how to approach new relationships and build enough trust to get on players when they make mistakes. 

In today’s frequency of transfer portal changes, Hall said it isn’t as simple as being the loudest voice or oldest on the team, but instead learning to approach teammates in a way that best gets your message through to them. 

“It’s just important to kind of get to know guys in this new day and age,” Hall said. “The quicker you can get to know someone, the quicker you can know how to lead them, because you can’t tell everyone the same thing to get them going… You can’t first time you see someone not doing the right thing just yell at them. You don’t have any trust with them yet.”

Hall’s approach to earn trust by leading with his actions before using his voice continues to help build a culture that was completely new a year ago. And with a new offensive identity under Petrino to join with the rejuvenated feelings from a successful spring, players like Hall are expectant of on-field improvements that can be made come fall.