With North Carolina’s season opener against Florida A&M just nine days away, the Tar Heels’ ongoing quarterback competition offers a stark contrast to almost every other team in the Atlantic Coast Conference in at least one potentially important way.

All but two ACC teams, UNC and lowly Duke, expect to have either their 2021 starter or an incoming transfer who started elsewhere last fall as their first-string QB this season.

Given the inexperience of redshirt freshman Drake Maye and redshirt sophomore Jacolby Criswell, who have only 35 college passing attempts and zero college starts between them after playing behind prolific passer Sam Howell, who’s now in the National Football League, the Tar Heels will be really green behind center at exactly the same time when most of the ACC has as much QB experience as at any time in the history of the league.

Thanks to a combination of traditional redshirts, the free COVID year of eligibility and the relatively new rules that allow major college transfers to be available immediately at their new schools, most ACC teams — and most Power Five teams, really — will be starting quarterbacks who are in their fourth, fifth or sixth year of college this season.

At Louisville, for example, sixth-year senior QB Malik Cunningham already has a whopping 37 career starts, giving the Cardinals the rare four-year starter at the most important position on the field. Wake Forest’s Sam Hartman (32 career starts), Virginia’s Brennan Armstrong (20) and NC State’s Devin Leary (20) are all fifth-year seniors hoping to build on their considerable previous success, although Hartman will be sidelined for the early part of the season because of an unspecified, non-football medical condition.

Georgia Tech’s Jeff Sims, Clemson’s D.J. Uiagalelei and Miami’s Tyler Van Dyke are third-year quarterbacks with significant starting experience under their belts.

Five more ACC teams plan to start experienced QBs who began their college careers elsewhere.

Boston College’s Phil Jurkovec, Florida State’s Jordan Travis and Syracuse’s Garrett Shrader led those same teams a year ago after transferring in from Notre Dame, Louisville and Mississippi State, respectively.

Meanwhile, Pittsburgh and Virginia Tech plan to start brand-new QB arrivals from the transfer portal. The Panthers’ Kedon Slovis started the last three seasons at Southern Cal, and the Hokies’ Grant Wells started the last two seasons at Marshall.

While such circumstances certainly don’t doom Carolina’s upcoming season, they do serve as a reminder that if the Tar Heels are going to do something special this season, they’ll have to do so while taking the proverbial road less traveled at the quarterback position.

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