CHAPEL HILL, N.C. — As North Carolina moves closer to 24 hours shy of kickoff time for its ACC football league opener against Clemson, backup quarterback Max Johnson is expected to be the Tar Heels’ starter on Saturday, according to the consensus among a number of sources close to the situation.
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Gio Lopez has been on the mend, recovering from the leg injury that knocked him out of UNC’s last game, the loss two weeks ago at Central Florida. Lopez has started all of the Tar Heels’ games this season, and sources have said he could be available to play Saturday at Kenan Stadium if needed.
UNC listed Lopez with a status designation of questionable on Thursday night, as per the ACC’s new policy that mandates player injury reports prior to conference games. Au’Tori Newkirk and Bryce Baker are true freshmen further down the Tar Heels’ depth chart at quarterback, and coach Bill Belichick pointed out this week “those freshmen are gaining ground, and they’re making improvement on a steady basis.”
But the starting job, for Saturday at least, has been trending toward Johnson for some time now, with UNC (2-2) and Clemson (1-3 overall, 0-2 ACC) both coming off open dates on their schedules. Johnson worked with the Tar Heels’ first-team offense during last week’s bye. Meanwhile, Lopez didn’t participate in a practice session last week.
“I expect for Max to have probably a breakout game,” UNC defensive lineman D’Antre Robinson said Thursday, when asked about Johnson as the potential starter for the Tar Heels. “He’s been a very good leader for us on the field. He’s been talking a lot more, talking to the whole team. He’s been giving a lot of motivation for the team, so I hope he goes out there and has a big game for us.”
The sixth-year senior Johnson has been called on in relief twice this season, when the transfer Lopez exited in the second halves of lopsided losses to TCU and UCF due to injuries. Johnson has gone has gone a combined 20-of-30 passing for 170 yards and two touchdowns. He entered with the Tar Heels trailing 41-7 against TCU and 27-3 at UCF.
And so Johnson’s college football odyssey continues with the expected starting assignment on Saturday against Clemson, in the first ACC game of UNC’s Belichick experiment. He made 14 starts across the 2020-21 seasons at LSU, the end of former coach Ed Orgeron’s time in charge, before making eight starts across the 2022-23 seasons at Texas A&M, the end of Jimbo Fisher’s tenure there.
The only start in Johnson’s UNC career, the ill-fated 2024 season opener, become unforgettable for frightening reasons. He suffered a gruesome broken leg that night at Minnesota, which doctors compared to the type of catastrophic injury that might occur in a car crash, rather than on a football field. Johnson underwent five surgeries and beyond the career-threatening concerns, there were fears that he might perhaps lose his right leg.
“Yeah especially when he was in Minnesota for the two weeks and I was back home,” UNC tight end Jake Johnson said Thursday, when asked if he wondered whether his older brother would be able to resume his playing career. “Just calling my parents and not knowing if he ever was going to play again, and having the realization that he potentially might lose his leg. It was hard. You just never know what God has for you, just His plan. Our goal as a family and what we had to do was just trust in the Lord, and He’ll make our ways prosperous. So always trusting in Him and gladly He did save Max’s leg.
“To do what he’s done now in coming back stronger, a lot of the guys, really the whole team and coaches, have belief in him. To do what he’s done is special, so I’m just grateful for that.”
Meanwhile, back-to-back losses to Georgia Tech and Syracuse have sent Clemson spiraling. The Tigers are arriving off to their worst start though four games in 21 years, after being picked as the runaway favorite to claim another ACC title in the preseason. Still, they’ve been installed as 14½-point favorites for Saturday’s visit to UNC by the oddsmakers.
For the Tar Heels, beatdown losses to power-conference opponents TCU and UCF by a combined margin of 82-23 have been sandwiched around victories against Charlotte and Richmond. The 315-pound Robinson said he would call UNC’s 34-9 defeat at UCF in his native Orlando, Fla., more of a motivational and educational tool than a dispiriting experience.
“I wouldn’t say disappointing,” Robinson said Thursday. “I mean, it’s probably good for us. We probably needed that loss to learn from our mistakes that we made. Of course, I didn’t want to lose in front of my family and everything like that, but I wouldn’t say it’s disappointing. You know, we learn from our mistakes. So probably good for us.”
The matchup between the 73-year-old Belichick and Clemson’s 55-year-old Dabo Swinney — who have become buddies in the coaching fraternity — marks just the second game in college football history featuring a head coach who has collected multiple Super Bowl rings against a head coach who has captured multiple national championships on the FBS level. The only other occurrence came in the former Blockbuster Bowl at the end of the 1992 season, when Stanford’s Bill Walsh (Super Bowl titles in the 1981, 1984, 1988 seasons) faced Penn State’s Joe Paterno (national titles in the 1982, 1986 seasons).
Clemson is playing in Chapel Hill for just the third time since 2002. The Tigers have won nine of the last 10 meetings with UNC, including six in a row since the Tar Heels’ last series victory in 2010 — during Swinney’s second full season in charge, after taking over for Tommy Bowden six games into the 2008 season. Since then, Clemson has piled up nine ACC league titles, seven College Football Playoff appearances and two CFP national championships. The Tigers enter Saturday with a record of 109-26 in ACC games under Swinney.
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