Mack Brown breaks down what it will take to win North Carolina's QB battle

The standard at the quarterback position has been set high for North Carolina since Mack Brown‘s return in 2019, with Sam Howell and Drake Maye both excelling and hearing their names called at the NFL Draft. It’s a standard that a new quarterback will look to uphold this upcoming season.

Transfer quarterback Max Johnson and redshirt sophomore Conner Harrell are competing for the Tar Heels’ starting spot with fall camp right around the corner and both appeared at ACC Media Days for North Carolina on Thursday. It was in Charlotte that UNC head coach Mack Brown was asked what it would take for one of them to be named the starter.

“It’s a great question,” Brown said. “I talked to Chip Lindsey yesterday and I said, ‘You know what? You’ve got to get down to sitting all three of those guys down and saying here’s who’s gonna play if you do these five things right.’ And then we’re going to put them more in game type situations and scrimmages during practice than you normally would.

“And you sit there and say after every practice, ‘Okay Max, you did three of these five, right. Conner you did two of these. Right now, Max, you’re the guy.’ And we’re going to put that pressure on them every day so they can do it.”

Brown is simply looking for his next starter under center to check the necessary boxes needed for North Carolina’s offense, a unit that ranked among the ACC’s top three in scoring over the last five seasons.

But both his top quarterbacks do bring differing experience and skillsets to the table. Johnson spent two seasons apiece at LSU and Texas A&M where he made 22 starts and threw for 5,853 yards and 47 touchdowns.

Meanwhile, Harrell enters the competition as a dual-threat quarterback with just one career start and five total game appearances while throwing for 270 yards and two touchdowns and rushing for 75 yards and a score on the ground in his first career start — North Carolina’s bowl game last season.

“Now Max has had four coordinators and four different offenses in four years. This will be his fifth offensive coordinator and fifth offense in five years. So you’ve got to help him make sure he’s got confidence, because that’s fragile to have that many different things thrown at him,” Brown explained.

“And our offensive line is going to be much better than perceived. So he’s going to have protection, you’ve got a great back (Omarion Hampton), we’ve got some really good receivers, we got a great tight end room. Connor runs 4.4 (second 40-yard dash time), so we’ve got to take what each one of those guys do and make sure that we highlight what they do in every practice and then let them work it out.”

Keeping an eye on who the Tar Heels next starter will be at quarterback will be worth tracking during Fall camp, especially if that starter can maintain the new offensive standards set in Chapel Hill this upcoming season.