Extra Points: Under The Radar

July 29, 2024 | Football

By Lee Pace

There is no Sam Howell and no Drake Maye, no Carolina blue plastered over the social media universe hyping the approaching college football season. Top 25 preseason rankings? No Tar Heel squad to be found. Projections for the new 17-team ACC that spans from Boston to Berkeley? Middle of the road for Carolina.

Mack Brown was contrasting the vibe around his 2024 Tar Heel football team last week at the ACC Football Kickoff event in Charlotte. At one point, he feigned a yawn.

"Sometimes with all the talk about quarterbacks, the rest of your team is like, 'We're good, Drake will take it,'" he said, motioning his hand to cover his mouth. "That's not the deal this year. We've all got to play. Now the pressure is on the team to play, it's not just on Drake."

Brown at various points last Thursday in visiting with print media, radio stations, bloggers and television outlets ran the litany of bullet points he's enthused about as training camp opens Monday night toward an Aug. 29 opener at Minnesota: having three quality quarterbacks (listed alphabetically) in Jacolby Criswell, Conner Harrell and Max Johnson; having one of the best running backs in the country in Omarion Hampton; making the commitment to play more players and develop more depth; believing a retooled offensive line can be more athletic and mentally tougher than recent units; and riding the fresh start on defense under new coordinator Geoff Collins.

"We don't have Sam and we don't have Drake," Brown says. "But we can be a better team. That's what we're working toward."

Certainly, the evolution of the offense will be a fascinating story to watch as the Tar Heels since Brown's return to Chapel Hill in 2019 have featured a poster boy talent under center in the likes of Howell (now with the Seattle Seahawks) and Maye (a rookie with the New England Patriots). Together, the wunderkinds from the greater Charlotte area lit the skies for 18,301 yards and 155 touchdowns.

The contrasts are illustrated in Brown's hinting over the last couple of years the Tar Heels at times on offense "were a little too pretty" now juxtaposed with second-year offensive coordinator Chip Lindsey latching on to the idea of "toughness travels."

"I heard that somewhere, 'toughness travels,'" Lindsey says. "I like it. I wrote on the board. We're opening at Minnesota. A night game against a typical big, strong, physical Big Ten opponent. It's going to be loud, a full house.

"It's about being tough, and I think that's what's going to define this O-line. I love where we're doing as a unit there. If you go on the road and can run the ball, that's good. We need to have an edge about us. We have made progress. We ran the ball better last year. We need to take the next step."

Brown and Lindsey embrace the potential at quarterback, that Criswell fought Maye tooth-and-nail for the starting job entering the 2022 season before transferring to Arkansas; that Harrell has elite speed and athleticism and a good arm and just lacks experience; that Johnson has the proper pedigree (his dad, Brad, played 17 years in the NFL) and has thrown nearly 800 passes as a quarterback at LSU and Texas A&M.

"The guys in this building think we should be good," Lindsey says. "No one else does. You have a first-round draft pick at quarterback, and everyone thinks you're good. We don't have that anymore. We're under the radar a little bit. I like that. The quarterback just needs to run the offense. If a guy's open, hit him. Take care of the ball. He doesn't have to make a lot of flashy plays. I like this team, I really do."

Brown believes with Hampton, who rushed for 1,504 yards and 15 touchdown in 2023, and the addition of USC transfer Darwin Barlow and a healthy Caleb Hood back in the fold that the Tar Heels can run the ball with the proficiency they did in 2020 with Michael Carter and Javonte Williams.

"Defenses will pack the box," Brown says. "We've got to be smart and spread them out. We've got good enough receivers, we're good enough at tight end that they can't just focus on Omarion."

Hampton muses that a 2,000-yard season would be a nice goal, but he's equally interested in improving his receiving skills, his pass protection acumen and his ability to be patient and read defenses and let his blockers upfront do their jobs.

"I think Omarion's the best back in the nation, bar none," says linebacker Power Echols. "If he's not well-known nationally, he's going to be. Whenever he gets the ball, it's 1,000 miles an hour."

"He caught 29 balls last year," Lindsey says. "He can be a problem in the passing game. If they drop eight, he has all kinds of space underneath. He has a chance to have a special year."

The Tar Heels have only one starter returning on the line, that being the powder keg guard Willie Lampkin, but they're encouraged by the improvement of left guard Malik McGowan, the progression of right tackle Trevyon Green from understudy to starter and the addition of transfers Austin Blaske, Howard Sampson, Jakiah Leftwich and Zach Greenberg. The bookends of Sampson (6-8, 325 pounds) and Green (6.7, 340) at the tackle positions should be quite the sight to behold.

"I feel like our O-line is crazy this year," Hampton says. "We have a lot of good talent in the O-line. I feel like I've never been a part of an O-line that's been this good."

"I think this O-line can be remembered as one of the greatest in Carolina history," Lampkin says. "We have the tools and the mindset and are prepared to go to battle every week."

"Sacks Allowed" is a statistical category that has irked Brown, with the Tar Heels in the bottom third nationally far too often. Of course, just throwing the ball as much as they did with Howell and Maye lends to more sacks. One element that should help in 2024 is the consistency of Randy Clements in his second year coaching the unit after a run of three different coaches in three years. There's been a ratcheted-up focus on the quarterbacks getting rid of the ball sooner and not trying to make splashy plays. And the staff has tweaked the Xs-and-Os foundation on how some passes are protected.

"It's going to be really interesting to see this offensive line," Brown said. "I can't stand sacks. Usually for every sack that you have, you lose a drive. We've been good enough to overcome it some. You can't just keep having sacks. It's not fair to your quarterback. Running the ball better, we should have fewer sacks. We had fewer last year than we had in the early years."

And having receivers who are viable targets and can get open is another factor in that variable. Senior wideout J.J. Jones was part of the Tar Heels' traveling party to Charlotte last week, and in addition to giving interviews, he carried a microphone and had some fun asking questions of his teammates. Jones was smiling from the back of the room when he asked Johnson to comment on the quality of the receiving corp.

"I mean, we've got some dudes at receiver," Johnson said. "No. 5 is a baller, we got some dudes out there. We've got a bunch of studs, these guys can take a slant to the crib."

The standard disclaimer applies to everything, of course, that we're still just in the preseason and they're still just words in the air, words on a page. But Brown believes taking what has been working for five years—an average of eight wins a year, a No. 3 national ranking in a key academic progress matrix and an average of four players being drafted by NFL teams over five years—and burnishing that with a handful of tweaks and initiatives will pay off in 2024.

"We've done a lot of good things that we haven't gotten credit for," Brown says. "But this is a performance-based business and I understand that. You're not going to get credit until you win a championship, until you finish the season better than we have the last two years. My message to the team: Grow up, keep your mouth shut and play better."

Chapel Hill writer Lee Pace (Carolina '79) has been writing about Tar Heel football under the "Extra Points" banner since 1990 and reporting from the sidelines on radio broadcasts since 2004. Write him at leepace7@gmail.com and follow him @LeePaceTweet.