Mack Brown balances how to handle quarterback battle, transfer portal

North Carolina is in the middle of spring football practice, trying to figure out its quarterback battle and where things stand. Head coach Mack Brown does that against the backdrop of the NCAA transfer portal.

It can make handling the quarterback situation tricky.

Announce a starter too soon and you run the risk of a player that lost the battle jumping ship and transferring out. Wait too long and you might have someone in the battle get disgruntled and head out.

It puts coaches between a rock and a hard place.

“I think we’re eight days away from the portal. It’s the 16th,” Brown said. “And the portal will come the 16th and we won’t even play our spring game until the 20th, so we could have somebody leave the 16th and not be here for the game. We could have somebody tell somebody they’re going in the portal on the 20th and play in the spring game and walk into my office afterwards and say, ‘Man, I’m out of here, I’m going to the portal.’ So it’s just different.”

The dynamic that coaches are in now is unlike anything before in the sport. The demands once the portal opens are large. Coaches not only have to keep track of what they’re losing from their rosters, they have to look for upgrades elsewhere too.

And then you have to recruit said players and convince them to come to your program, all in a very short period of time.

If it bothers the players currently involved in the quarterback battle, that’s kind of just too bad.

“You try to keep an open conversation with it, and at the same time we’re in the kid business, so we want what’s best for the kid,” Brown said. “And like our two quarterbacks, we don’t know which one’s going to start. It was that way with really Drake (Maye) and Jacolby (Criswell), but it was also that way with those three, when Sam (Howell) got here.

“And you want to watch them go through summer, you want to watch them compete and lead to see who really earns the spot at the end of summer and into preseason.”

The reality is some guys want to know where they stand more definitively. Whether that happens this spring or summer remains to be seen.

But Brown knows players hitting the transfer portal following a quarterback battle is a possibility. It’s why he’s so open with his players.

“Since I’ve been here and since the portal came on, we have been dreadfully honest with every young person in trying to tell him, ‘Here’s exactly what we see and where you stand here. And if you don’t feel good about this and you don’t think you can change it, then let’s help you go somewhere else,'” Brown said. “And that’s just the way we are and we’ll try to help every young person we can. And that’s some tough conversations, but it’s been good.”