Pirates officially open 2026 fall camp

Second-year East Carolina Head Football Coach Blake Harrell officially opened the 2026 campaign Wednesday after guiding the Pirates through their first official workout of the season on Hight Field inside the Cliff Moore Practice Complex.

Under cloudy skies and temperatures touching 80 degrees with light rain, the Pirates began the day’s activities with a 6:15 a.m. wake-up call, breakfast, treatment and positional meetings before turning in a 110-minute practice in shorts and helmets reinstalling schemes, while conducting individual and team periods, along with special team and two-minute drill segments. After a team lunch, the squad will have a group lift and more meetings before dinner, followed by unit meetings and a team walk thru.

“It’s an exciting time of year,” Harrell said. “Probably my favorite time of the year. If you look at the season, all year long, I enjoy all of it, and I enjoy being a football coach. But something about camp, when you get the opportunity to put that ball down and see the guys go at it and get that competition going, it just gets you going. This is what I love doing, and being a ball coach, and so many of our players and coaches do the same.

“We know that that camp is about building a foundation. Camp is about building the base of that house; the base of that pyramid that’s going to help us grow throughout the season. If we don’t take care of what what’s important right now in camp and building that foundation, we’re going to have a weak foundation. It’s going to crumble some point in the season. As I told our players last night, we’re going to make camp tough, as is everybody in the country is. So, you learn how to handle adversity, but you got to keep pushing away comfort because at some point in camp, comfort can slide in. It can slide in, and you get kind of okay with that, and it can just kind of it can cripple you. So, we got to be very cautious, and don’t let that happen.

“We have more summer access than we ever had to our players, and we’ll even have more next summer. But there’s something different about summer access, OTAs, and the speed you can play at, or the speed you can go, or the number of reps you can get in because of limitations of hours compared to camp. You’re probably looking at quadruple; triple the number of reps you get in on a camp day. So, some of our guys got to learn the accumulation of that, learn to adjust to that.

“Today was one of our shorter practices, working into it, and it’ll kind of grow throughout the week. First day in helmets, but excited. We had really good energy out there, really good juice. Those guys are moving around. Guys know where they’re going. We just got to do it with a little bit more urgency, intent, and purpose about those things. So, I think we’re moving in the right direction. Obviously, we’ve got to continue to improve on that and get better every single day. That’s what camp is about. Get turned around, do it tomorrow. Unlike spring practice, where you have two or three days before you do it again. In fall camp, preseason camp, you go right at the next day. So, fired up about the next few weeks, and fired up to see where our program goes, and how much we can grow each and every single day.”

Of the Pirates’ 119-man camp roster, they return four of 22 positional starters (one offense, three defense) that started at least seven of 13 contests from 2025, and three special teams’ members. ECU also welcomed back 30 letterman from a year ago (eight offense, 18 defense, four specialists), 35 student-athletes that participated in spring ball and 15 new players for fall camp.

Harrell saw a handful of new assistant coaches participate in their first Pirate fall camp in Jordan Davis (offensive coordinator/quarterbacks), Jordon Hankins (defensive coordinator/linebackers), Julian Griffin (running backs), Alex Huettell (offensive line/run game coordinator) and Juan Soto (receivers), as well as senior analysts Caedon Malone (offense) and John Straniero (defense).

East Carolina is scheduled to progress to shells (shoulder pads) for the first time Friday (August 7) before a full gear workout the following Tuesday (August 11) per NCAA rules. After the Pirates second of two scrimmages on August 22, they will return to a customary in-season early morning schedule in preparation for their season opener at Alabama on Saturday, Sept. 5.

Fans can follow the Pirates throughout camp on their social media channels (Facebook, Instagram and X).