David Glenn

Carolina football has a decade-long problem that just won’t go away, and unless the situation improves down the stretch, the 2024 Tar Heels will be the first of Brown’s six teams (during his second tenure in Chapel Hill) to miss the postseason.

During Mack Brown’s first coaching tenure at North Carolina, he quickly elevated the program to a point where winning records were expected, and most of his teams had much higher aspirations.

Will any in-state football team still have a season worth following by that point? It’s possible, especially at Duke, perhaps, given the Blue Devils’ hot start, but everyone else seems to be running out of time.

Just in the last 14 years, though, the Tar Heels have produced the four best NFL quarterback prospects in the history of their program: (in chronological order) TJ Yates, Mitch Trubisky, Sam Howell and Drake Maye.

One of the most highly recruited players on the UNC roster, Hampton was considered among the top five high school seniors in North Carolina and among the top 10 prep running backs in the nation in 2021, when he rushed for 1,948 yards and 39 touchdowns on 161 carries (12.1 yards per carry) for Cleveland High School in Clayton.

Carolina’s extremely experienced six-man rotation in 2023 reflected at least a little bit of quality offensive line depth, a relatively uncommon phenomenon in college football and an extreme rarity in Chapel Hill in recent decades.

UNC Football head coach Mack Brown recently joined Chapelboro columnist David Glenn for an interview on the North Carolina Sports Network.