Position Preview: Quarterbacks for UNC Football
While the past five years have been a mixed bag overall for UNC football, they have treated us to almost certainly the best five-year run of quarterback play that Chapel Hill has ever seen. Sam Howell and then Drake Maye rewrote the Tar Heel record books in their three and two years starting, respectively, before heading to the NFL — Howell as a fifth round pick who became a starter (and will be getting at least some starters’ reps due to injury in the coming days), Maye as this year’s 3rd overall pick and heir apparent in New England.
Maye’s 2023 wasn’t as stellar as his breakout 2022 season, but he was still awesome. The stats are hindered by his throwing four interceptions in his first three games, when he was getting used to a new (and worse) offensive coordinator/QB coach and missing his #1 receiver, but 3608 yards at 8.5 yards per attempt and 33 total touchdowns is nothing to sneeze at, especially with Omarion Hampton vulturing 15 scores on the ground.
Indeed, as national- and NFL-minded analysts turned their eyes on UNC’s 2023 season, it became the prevailing belief that Maye had carried his team on his back to get even to the relatively middling results UNC saw last year. As Mack Brown and the Tar Heels turn the page to the post-Maye era, perhaps nothing will define this season and the near future more for UNC than how easily and effectively they can replace him.
Well, as aforementioned, star quarterback Drake Maye is now in training camp with the Patriots, taking reps as a backup while being groomed to be the next face of the franchise. Less impactful were the departures of reserve quarterbacks Jefferson Boaz and Tad Hudson. Boaz never really had a chance at seeing the field as a quarterback from the time he joined UNC, usually running fourth on the depth chart before grad transferring to Western Carolina for this upcoming year (after making a pit stop at Stephen F. Austin).
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Hudson, on the other hand, arrived in Chapel Hill with some fanfare as the possible heir apparent in the new lineage of Tar Heel signal-callers thanks to his high school success and obvious arm talent (and coming from the same high school as Howell didn’t hurt), but he had accuracy issues to iron out and it doesn’t appear that happened in two offseasons at UNC. He’s now at Coastal Carolina.
Vying to follow in Maye’s footsteps after backing him up for two years is Conner Harrell. Harrell didn’t have a ton of hype coming out of high school, but he did have a winning pedigree after a senior year where he led his high school to an undefeated season and an Alabama 7-A state championship.
The 6’2, 210-pound passer quickly impressed his coaches when he arrived on campus in the spring of 2022 with his decision-making and knack for getting the ball out on time. He entered 2023 as Maye’s backup, though camp reports were not nearly as glowing as they’d been the previous year, and played spot snaps, most notably the fourth quarter against Campbell, before starting the Duke’s Mayo Bowl against West Virginia in the wake of Maye announcing he would be entering the draft. Against WVU, Harrell completed 18/27 passes for 207 yards, a touchdown, and two interceptions while getting sacked 7 times.
