Don’t worry about the Carolina QBs; someone will step up.

The modern era of UNC football – which is as far as I go back – is rich with surprise stories from the quarterback position. So, if Larry Fedora isn’t making fake news when he says he’s not worried that any of his QBs has separated themselves with the opener against Cal just 10 days away, don’t sweat it.

Go back to the 1960s, when new tough-guy coach Bill Dooley changed the country club atmosphere around the program and ran off a bunch of players, he converted a safety named Gayle Bomar to quarterback. Although Bomar did not have enough help, he set some total offense records and upset Duke his junior and senior seasons. That was good enough in those days.

But in the ‘70s, when Dooley began putting together bowl teams regularly, he went 11-1 and won a second straight ACC championship with an unknown named Nick Vidnovic, a former punter. “Nick the Kick” they called him, until he beat everyone but Ohio State and Archie Griffin in 1972.

Dick Crum had big stars like Scott Stankavage and Rod Elkins in the ‘80s, but Mack Brown had to find a quarterback his first few years. He found one in Todd Burnett who led the Tar Heels to the first of Brown’s gazillion winning seasons as a head coach. Two years later, when his quarterback play faltered, he pulled the red-shirt off a talented freshman named Jason Stanicek, whom Brown thought wasn’t ready. He was.

Carl Torbush stunned N.C. State in Charlotte behind Oscar Davenport (remember him?) and while John Bunting didn’t do enough to keep his job, he discovered record-breaker Darian Durant and turned him loose. Butch Davis arrived and without a proven QB, so he gave the job to lightly recruited T.J. Yates, who broke all kinds of records and was the first UNC quarterback to play in the NFL.

Even Fedora never expected a kid named Marquise Williams to last long enough to be the star he became. So, don’t fret, Tar Heel fans. Among grad transfer Brandon Harris, sophomore Nathan Elliott and red-shirt freshman Chazz Surratt, someone will emerge to be a star or at least keep the rebuilding season from being a ground-up job. History says so.