Catching up? Here are Tar Heel Blog’s position group reviews for the offense: quarterbacks, running backs, wide receivers, tight ends, offensive line.
By now, if you’ve been following things over the past couple of weeks, the emerging theme across the position group reviews seems clear: question marks everywhere.
- QB: ?, ?, ?, ?*
- RB: Hall, June, ?*, ?
- WR: Shipp, Kekahuna, ?!, ?
- TE: ?, ?, ?, ?*
- LT: Hall, ?*
- LG: ?!, ?
- Center: ?!, ?*
- RG: Banfield, ?
- RT: ?, ?*
Bold text denotes players coming off of a significant injury. Asterisks (*) mark either true freshmen or redshirt freshmen with minimal or no game experience. Exclamation points (!) signify players moving up from FCS. So, that’s 20 question marks out of 26 potential contributors on offense.
The issue of roster construction remains a fraught one in Chapel Hill. The face behind that construction, Michael Lombardi, has been a polarizing topic in Chapel Hill since the moment he stepped foot in the Kenan Football Center. The promise behind the roster build was the premise that Lombardi’s and Bill Belichick’s NFL expertise would find players with heretofore hidden potential, and Belichick and his staff would then unlock that potential.
Nowhere is that premise going to be tested more thoroughly than with UNC’s 2026 offense. The coach, Bobby Petrino, has proven himself in stop after stop, getting it done in different ways with different talents at his disposal. Many of these question marks certainly look the part. For example, Shaq McRoy, the ? at right tackle, brings fluid athleticism in a 6’8”, 335-pound frame. Mason Humphrey, the ?! at WR, dominated FCS secondaries with his 6’4”, 215-pound combination of size and length. Jelani Thurman, the first ? at TE, apparently has been wowing observers in practices, using his 6’6”, 250-pund mass and soft hands to win balls deep downfield. Many of those question marks could turn into !!. The potential, evidenced in the measurables, intrigues.
Intrigue can become delight only if the OL holds up and the QB delivers consistently accurate throws to all three levels of the field. The offensive line at the moment presents a riddle wrapped in an enigma. The two-deep includes eight question marks for those 10 spots. The right tackle is on his third stop in three years, earning only 58 snaps in his first two. The back-up tackles have 62 college snaps between them, and one of them is coming off an injury. Two starters are also coming off injury. Two starters come to UNC from the FCS, with five FBS appearances between the two of them — and some worrying game film from those encounters. The depth chart at center, perhaps the second-most important spot on offense, combines everything: injury, concerning FCS game tape, plus a true freshman back-up. Put it all together, and OL coach Will Friend has his work cut out for him.
As for QB, the questions differ for each player on the depth chart. Does Billy Edwards recover from his knee injury sufficiently to drive balls downfield and avoid any pressure that might come up the middle? Does Miles O’Neill finally start delivering the chain-moving throws (out routes, underneath stuff, and screens) on time and on target? Did last year’s offensive coaching disaster set back Au’Tori Newkirk’s development? Could Travis Burgess, after missing nearly his entire senior season with a knee injury, both absorb the offense and adjust to the college game fast enough to see the field this season?
No one knows the answers to any of these questions, not even the coaches apparently, with conflicting anecdotes about presumed starters and back-ups filtering out of the information void that is UNC football this spring and summer. While every team enters every season with questions, for UNC the sheer volume of them on one side of the ball becomes its own, larger question. Can any coaching staff get this many players to perform at levels they haven’t yet evidenced?
If Bill Belichick and his staff accomplish that in Dublin, then the promise and foundational premise of this coaching hire would have its first proof of concept. The narratives would start to turn. UNC football wouldn’t be back, but it would be, finally, on the right track for the first time in a long time.