Extra Points: Home Grown

Extra Points: Home Grown

By Lee Pace

Mark Maye was just a few years too early, his mid-1980s career as a quarterback at Carolina coming before Mack Brown arrived and jettisoned the program into the nation's Top 25 in the early 1990s and then Top 10 in 1996. Maye, however, did work two years as a graduate assistant under Brown in 1990-91 and then a year as an intern in Athletic Director John Swofford's office, so he got a behind-the-curtains look at the development of the program.

"Coach Brown had an incredible ability to remember names and make people feel at ease," Maye remembers. "You immediately trusted him. You knew big things were happening. And you know what? They're happening again."

And Errol Hood was just a few years too late, signing with Carolina in 1997 and red-shirting during the Tar Heels' 11-1 season that capped Brown's first tenure in Chapel Hill. After Brown took the Texas job in 1998, Hood played cornerback under Carl Torbush and John Bunting from 1998-2001.

"I was a little heartbroken when he left, but I understood," Hood says. "But I'm a Tar Heel. I was going to play for whoever. It turned out I had three great coaches, not just one."

Now Maye and Hood will live another Tar Heel football career vicariously through their respective sons. Quarterback Drake Maye and running back Caleb Hood are among the 18 Tar Heels welcomed into the program Wednesday on National Signing Day.

"We're delighted and fired up," Mark says. "Watching this team the last two years has been so much fun. I can't wait to see Drake be a part of it."

"It's a dream come true," Errol adds. "It's a phenomenal experience knowing my son will finally be out there. I know if anybody can bring out every ounce of talent out of my kid, it's Coach Brown."

The class the Tar Heels announced Wednesday includes 18 players—nine offense, nine defense, 15 from the state of North Carolina and two, Maye and defensive end Keeshawn Silver of Rocky Mount, ranked among the top five in the state. It's the second year running that the 247 Sports website has listed Carolina among the top 15 nationally, and Brown notes that this Carolina class would have come in at No. 10 had cornerback Tony Grimes been listed in this group instead of enrolling last summer and actually playing during the 2020 season—which should have been his senior year in high school.

The addition of nine defensive players combined with last year's highly regarded haul (and adding Kedrick Bingley-Jones, who missed all year with an injury), gives Brown and the defensive staff an outstanding nucleus going forward. Brown said he looked onto the field at one point during Carolina's 62-26 destruction of Miami last Saturday and saw freshmen Kaimon Rucker, Desmond Evans, Myles Murphy, Clyde Pinder and Ja'Qurious Conley bunched up around the tackle, not to mention that Grimes was on the field as well.

"I thought, 'Oh my gosh, they're all freshmen,'" he said. "When we started playing the freshmen later in the season is when we got better on defense. These guys are very talented. Now you add this new group with their speed and tremendous talent, and we're losing very few. We can't wait for spring practice. We're going to throw these young ones out there and let them go. This year's freshmen didn't get a spring practice. It will help our depth and help our competition. Now to earn playing time, you're going to have to practice really hard. That's when you get better."

Brown said the nine months of the onerous cloud of Covid-19 really didn't affect this class, as most of these prospects had visited campus during the 2019 season and/or for basketball games early in the winter of 2020 before the pandemic hit in March and the recruiting world was turned upside down—no scouting trips off-campus for coaches and no campus tours for prospects. Brown said one interesting offshoot of the new reality was this signing class seems to have connected in a manner that others before had not.

"I love the confidence and attitude of this class," Brown said. "We've had a quiet team. This bunch is loud and aggressive. Maybe it's because so many are from in-state and they've played against each other and been to camps together. I think through all the Zoom meetings and Facetime and the text chains they're on, they've bonded more than any recruiting class I've ever seen."

Maye and Hood as legacy recruits were there for the taking, though Maye took a bit more of a circuitous route. Both fathers have photos of their respective sons as young Tar Heel fans, and the Maye family was certainly highly visible during oldest son Luke Maye's role on Carolina's 2017 national basketball championship team. Errol proudly posted on his Facebook page before NSD a photo of Caleb as a toddler outfitted in Carolina garb on the playing field in Kenan Stadium.

The first major recruiting victory for Brown and QB coach/offensive coordinator Phil Longo was luring Sam Howell from his commitment to Florida State in December 2018, their first month on the job after Brown was hired in late November. Drake was a high school sophomore at the time and already a major target of colleges nationwide, with Carolina, Alabama and Clemson at the stop of his list. After visiting Tuscaloosa that spring and returning for camp in June, he committed to the Crimson Tide in July 2019—before watching the Tar Heels' offense and seeing what might be in the offing under the new coaching staff.

Though Drake was a lifelong Carolina fan, the Tar Heels' struggles from 2017-18 weighed on his decision.

"He loved Carolina, but from a pure college football perspective, he was always an Alabama fan," Mark says. "Carolina wasn't very good at the time, and he thought that was the best place for him."

But Brown, Longo and other assistant coaches like Dré Bly and Tommy Thigpen who had connections to Charlotte and the Maye family continued to recruit Drake. Come September, Drake began seeing what a freshman quarterback could do in the Tar Heels' offense—Howell threw for 3,641 yards and 38 touchdowns—and what potential the team as a whole had in cobbling together a 7-6 record with all six losses by six points or fewer. Maye swerved back to the home team in early March 2020.

"Drake developed a close relationship with all of the coaches, but particularly Coach Brown," Mark says. "He got really comfortable with everyone, and then when he saw the program swing around last year and how much fun that offense would be to play in, he changed his mind. We all wanted him to end up there. It was just a matter of giving him a little time and space to work through it. It turned out perfect."

Mark was a nationally coveted recruit coming out of Charlotte in 1983, earning Parade All-America honors at Independence High, and was all-state in football and basketball. His career at Carolina during Coach Dick Crum's era was dampened by a chronic shoulder injury, and of course the style of offense in favor at the time was a ground-oriented, I-formation attack.

Maye considers that his best year passing was his senior year in 1987, when he threw for 1,965 yards and capped a career of 3,459 yards.

"Sam had more yards his freshman year than I did my whole career," he says. "It was a different game back then, that's for sure. Today it's a quarterback-driven game. There's a lot of decisions to make in the RPO game, and the quarterbacks are throwing it all over the place. I'm excited to see what Drake can do."

"I'm trying to create my name," Drake said Wednesday. "Right now, I'm either Luke Maye's brother or Mark Maye's son, so I'm trying to create my own name, win some games at Carolina and have fun there."

Given that high school football in North Carolina was suspended in 2020 because of the virus, Maye's last game for Myers Park was the Mustangs' loss in November 2019 in the state 4AA playoffs at Richmond County High in Rockingham. The Raiders prevailed in a 35-32 squeaker before a crowd of some 9,000 fans with Caleb Hood running the show at quarterback.

Hood will be a running back for the Tar Heels, and Errol went to great lengths during the school and football shutdown over 2020 to make sure Caleb and his brother, Kellan, a year younger, had all the workout equipment at home to stay in shape. Caleb Hood and Drake Maye had become good friends the previous several years on the 7-on-7 summer football circuit, and Errol found it odd the week of the Myers Park game that his son didn't seem to develop the nasty edge toward his opponent.

"Caleb was like, 'Dad, Drake's my dude, he's a good guy,'" Errol says. "Caleb's a student of the game. He liked seeing what other quarterbacks do and what other teams run."

Mark Maye and Errol Hood might have met and shaken hands at a 7-on-7 game or Chapel Hill function over the years, but neither is certain. One thing's for sure—they'll have a chance to connect over the coming years with their sons at Carolina.

Chapel Hill writer Lee Pace (UNC '79) is in his 31st year writing "Extra Points" and 17th reporting from the sidelines for the Tar Heel Sports Network. Follow him @LeePaceTweet and email him at leepace7@gmail.com.

Scoreboard Slider

University of North Carolina Athletics

Related News

Players Mentioned

Kedrick Bingley-Jones

Ja'Qurious Conley

Desmond Evans

Tony Grimes

Caleb Hood

Sam Howell

Drake Maye

Myles Murphy

Kaimon Rucker

Keeshawn Silver

Related Videos