If you’ve taken the time to sift through all of the unnecessary Bill Belichick/Jordan Hudson melodrama, and the predictable will he or won’t he go back to the NFL discussions associated with the North Carolina Tar Heels football program ever since the six-time Super Bowl winning head coach landed in Chapel Hill, then you know that on the field, there are some very interesting on-field questions worth taking a long hard look at related to the Heels.
Most notably, it’s worth noting that there still questions about who will be starting at quarterback for North Carolina on Monday September 1st when the Tar Heels kick off their season against TCU.
Early indications are that it will be South Alabama transfer Gio Lopez who gets the nod, but sixth-year signal caller Max Johnson and prized freshman Bryce Baker shouldn’t necessarily be ruled out. But based on Bill Belichick’s own words, it sounds like the redshirt sophomore who led South Alabama to a victory in the Salute To Veterans Bowl last December does have the leg up halfway through the month of June.
“He was really productive at South Alabama,” Belichick said of Lopez, according to Daniel Hager of On3. “He’s a dual-threat quarterback who has had plenty of productive yardage in both the running game and the passing game. He’s a tough kid who has played really well against tough competition and teams like LSU. It looks like he’s definitely ready for this level.”
Lopez went 6-5 in 11 starts last season for the Jaguars, throwing for 2,559 yards, 18 touchdowns and 5 interceptions while adding another 463 yards and 7 touchdowns on the ground. In a handful of appearances during his freshman season, Lopez threw for 475 yards and 4 touchdowns, and rushed for 154 yards and 2 touchdowns.
But in his career, Lopez only has experience against one Power 4 conference opponent… the aforementioned game against LSU, a 42-10 loss in Baton Rouge in which Lopez actually played reasonably well (17-23, 173 yards, 1 touchdown, 33 yards rushing).
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This highlights a key issue, likely one of many, that Belichick will face in his first year as the North Carolina head coach. The only quarterback on the Tar Heels roster with more than a full season’s worth of starts is Max Johnson, who suffered a broken leg in Carolina’s season opener last season. If it’s not Johnson, then it will be a relatively green and very young signal-caller opening the season with the weight of outsized expectations on his shoulders.
