CHAPEL HILL — North Carolina football coach Mack Brown has a timeline in mind and several factors to consider before the Tar Heels name a starting quarterback.

Following UNC’s first official practice of the 2024 season on Monday night at the Bill Koman Practice Complex, Brown discussed the situation and his plan ahead of the opener at Minnesota on Aug. 29.

Returning sophomore Conner Harrell, Texas A&M transfer Max Johnson and Arkansas transfer Jacolby Criswell are the three quarterbacks battling to get the starting nod against the Golden Gophers.

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Brown said UNC has “three really talented quarterbacks,” but he’d like to have one of them taking a majority of the reps in the near future. Throughout Monday’s practice, first-team reps were mostly split between Harrell and Johnson. Harrell was up first in most of the drills, but Johnson got the nod under center in the team portion of practice.

“What I’ve liked, in my experience, is about 10 days or a week before the start (of the season), let him be the starter so he’s comfortable talking to the team as a starter and also let him talk to you all before the game,” Brown said.

“. … I’d like for them to compete at a very high level. One of them’s gonna look good one day and the other one’s gonna look better the next day. If you go back and forth every day, then it gets confusing. We want to get a body of work. Chip (Lindsey) and Clyde Christensen have given them five things that they need to be successful at if they’re going to take the job.”

Brown says every position group has a list of what they need to accomplish to be successful. The veteran head coach didn’t have the list in front of him, but he highlighted five keys as it relates to finding a starting quarterback.

“Know the offense backward and forward, so you can get us in the right play at the right time. Get the ball out of your hands and don’t take a quarterback sack, because we’ve had too many of those,” Brown said.

“It would be accuracy as a passer. It would be the ability to get the ball to the right guy — don’t just throw the deep ball if it’s not there. … And take care of the ball. Those would be five of the maybe seven things we would ask them to do.”

Staff writer Rodd Baxley can be reached at rbaxley@fayobserver.com or @RoddBaxley on X/Twitter. 

This article originally appeared on The Fayetteville Observer: UNC coach Mack Brown highlights 5 keys to find Tar Heels' starting QB