Extra Points: The Voice

By Lee Pace

On the playing field where Drake Maye has thrown pinpoint passes to receivers on streak, corner, wheel and drag routes, on the very surface where he's busted the pocket to pick up first downs and occasionally (to his coaches' horror) leaped through the air toward the goal line, Maye is running the gauntlet one February morning through a compendium of medicine balls, straps, bands and cones.

Maye and fellow quarterbacks Conner Harrell, Jefferson Boaz, Tad Hudson and Russell Tabor are out at dawn launching medicine balls of various sizes onto the ground or against the sidewalls of the seating area. They are contorted like a stork, balancing on one leg, the opposite leg extended behind them, torsos bent over, arms crossed and their upper bodies rotating back and forth. They are on their knees, pressing bands overhead that are anchored to free weights. They'll don shoulder straps anchored to the wall and work on simultaneously putting force into the ground and rotating their chests.

"This is all about building capacity for the torso," says A.J. Blue, the former Tar Heel quarterback and running back now on the strength and condition staff. "The first- and second-team guys will throw a thousand balls a week in spring or in camp. They have to hold up to that. When guys have a weak torso or do not have a stable enough foundation, they start to throw with their upper bodies. If you throw with your upper body, you'll make inaccurate throws. Accurate throws, powerful throws are all built from the torso down. No matter how strong your arm is, efficiency and accuracy and the ability to throw over and over again begins with a strong torso."

"I'm more focused than ever on this stuff," Maye says. "I want to be the most athletic, polished quarterback I can be. A.J. and the strength staff are awesome putting these workouts together."

Often these winter conditioning sessions end with players running sprints on the treadmills set at a 20-degree angle. They are not fun. But Blue marveled one day seeing Maye in the center of the room, exhorting his teammates to finish the morning strong. He contrasted that with 12 months earlier, when the void of Sam Howell at quarterback left the naturally soft-spoken Maye and Jacolby Criswell as the heirs-apparent to the job.

"We couldn't get a sound out of either one of them," Blue remembers. "This year, it's been beautiful to see. Okay, this is the real Drake. Last year, we saw the Drake who could play football. Now we've got the Drake who can lead the team. He's setting the standard. He's now the voice."

Later in the afternoon, Maye might gather the receivers for an impromptu throwing and catching session, periods where he focuses on footwork and throwing mechanics he's picked up from Chip Lindsey, the Tar Heels' new quarterbacks coach and offensive coordinator. Maye watching tape from his record-setting fall of 2022—when he threw for 4,321 yards and 38 touchdowns on 66 percent completions—nonetheless found nits to pick. He quibbled over his arm motion and footwork synching up on throws to his left. His feet got a little jittery and he'd wander into the back of his own blocker.

"I'm impatient by nature," Maye says. "If I go to a restaurant, I don't like to wait. Sometimes if a guy's not open, I don't want to wait. Sometimes I move my eyes, get a little too antsy. I need to learn to relax more back there. I need to work on my drops—my three-step and slide drops. There's always something."

Maye's physical development, mechanics and skills are just the tip of the iceberg for the Tar Heel offense as spring practice commenced last week. The Carolina roster includes 19 new players—10 freshmen and nine transfers. And the offense has three new coaches, a notable new analyst, and a mandate from Coach Mack Brown to shore up several areas of what has otherwise been the Tar Heels' most prolific multi-year stretch of offense in their history.

"We have had four good years moving ball and scoring points," Brown says. "But we had a problem with tackles-for-loss the first year. In the fourth year, we were still 91st in the country. That's still too many. This year we were 102nd nationally in sacks. In red-zone scoring, we were 106th. Those are areas we need to improve. We've not fixed them yet. It's time to fix them.

"And we want to be more aggressive with the running game and be able to run the ball when we want to run it."

Lindsey, formerly the head coach at Troy and offensive coordinator at Auburn and Arizona State, is now running the offense. Randy Clements is the line coach and Freddie Kitchens is handling tight ends. And Clyde Christensen, a Tar Heel quarterback from the late 1970s and quarter-century veteran coaching in the NFL, has been added as an analyst and brings the perspective of having coached Tom Brady, Peyton Manning, Andrew Luck and Jameis Winston.

"We'll have one of the strongest offensive rooms in the country," Brown says.

"There are a lot of ideas and a lot of voices in this group," Maye adds. "I think it will be fun to see what we can come up with."

You won't see any major changes schematically. Lindsey is retaining most of the nomenclature as well as the basic structure of using one back, one tight end and three receivers. What the Tar Heels have wielded offensively in general has been quite successful. Behind Howell and Maye from 2019-22, Carolina averaged 468 yards and 36 points a game.

But Brown believes the offense became too reliant on the fireworks from its quarterbacks' arms and the fleet feet and sure hands of receivers like Dazz Newsome, Dyami Brown, Josh Downs and Antoine Green. He rues the Tar Heels' finish to the 2022 season when the offense was stoned in the second half by Georgia Tech, was forced into missed field goal attempts in overtime against N.C. State, could rush for only three yards a pop against Clemson in the ACC Championship Game and then couldn't post a touchdown from the Oregon two yard-line late in the Holiday Bowl.

"We got soft and didn't finish like we needed to," Brown says. "We got too dependent on Drake because he was so good and our skill was so good that we could beat most people by throwing it up and down the field. To win championships, you have to run the ball and stop the run. Until we do those things, we're not going to win many more games.

"This is a physical game. You can't just throw it all the time. We had too many second-and-12s. Running the ball will help our defense, keep them off the field."

The Tar Heels return four of five offensive linemen as William Barnes, Ed Montilus, Corey Gaynor and Spencer Rolland all opted to make use of their extra Covid year and play another season as graduates. They are deep at running back, not losing a single player who carried the ball in 2022 and benefitting from the returns of British Brooks and Caleb Hood, who each missed significant time with injury. Their tight ends were uber-productive last year and all three are back. And Brown believes two transfers at the receiver position, Nate McCollum and Tez Walker, can make immediate impacts at a position jarred by the loss of Brown and Green. McCollum is a slot receiver who started 10 games at Georgia Tech, and Walker at 6-foot-3 can run, jump and catch in the mold of other long Tar Heel receivers.

Maye will certainly have plenty of options around him. Last year, he launched 517 passes while the Tar Heels had 324 rushing attempts beyond the ones when Maye carried the ball himself. He's fine with narrowing that disparity in 2023.

"A better run game opens up the pass, it gives us different ways to attack a defense," he says. "We saw a lot of teams dropping eight on us, forcing me to check it down or force us to run the ball."

Adds Lindsey, "If we run the ball better, that will help protect Drake better and hopefully we'll score a whole bunch of points."

That's nothing new around Tar Heel football of late. But there's always room to massage the nuances. And with Drake Maye bringing a healthy mix of humility and drive into his third season, there's plenty of room to the upside.

Chapel Hill writer Lee Pace is in his 33rd year writing features on the Carolina football program under the "Extra Points" banner. He is the author of "Football in a Forest" and reports from the sidelines of Tar Heel Sports Network broadcasts. Follow him at @LeePaceTweet and write him at leepace7@gmail.com

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University of North Carolina Athletics

Players Mentioned

William Barnes

Jefferson Boaz

British Brooks

Jacolby Criswell

Josh Downs

Corey Gaynor

Antoine Green

Conner Harrell

Caleb Hood

Tad Hudson

Drake Maye

Nate McCollum

Ed Montilus

Spencer Rolland

Russell Tabor

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