CHARLOTTE, N.C. — There was no happy ending for UNC quarterback Sam Howell Thursday in Charlotte. No storybook sense of déjà vu, either, even though he likely started and ended his college career in the same stadium against the same opponent.
This time Howell couldn’t pull a miracle out of the thin, mayo-infused air. South Carolina overwhelmed both Howell’s awful offensive line and the Tar Heels, 38-21, before a crowd of 45,520 at the Duke’s Mayo Bowl in Bank of America Stadium.
After the game, Howell didn’t commit to whether he will return for another year in Chapel Hill. But most people expect he will declare himself eligible for the NFL draft before the Jan. 17 deadline.
“I have some decisions to make,” Howell said after the game, adding that he would be praying a lot over his choices the next few days before making his choice.
It sounded to me like he had one hand on the door to the NFL, though. And I certainly would go pro if I were Howell. He will be a certain first-round pick by the time the interviews and evaluations are done, and another year at UNC would be far more likely to hurt than help his draft stock.
Howell has given the Tar Heels so much already — he’s easily the most productive QB that UNC has ever had — but too often the rest of the team hasn’t matched his level of play.
It’s time for him to go.
After the game, Howell lingered on the Bank of America field first, then later told his teammates that he loved them in the locker room.
“If this is my last game, it was a fun ride — a fun journey,” Howell said.
The final game wasn’t much fun, though.
A 12-point favorite, the Tar Heels never led in this one and trailed the Gamecocks 18-0 by the end of the first quarter. Howell’s only win of the day was that he didn’t get hurt.
It was a risk playing in a relatively meaningless bowl game at all — a risk many players in similar situations have not taken over the years. But Howell is a team-first guy and wanted one more run this season with his UNC brothers.
But the run turned into a sputtering jog. The Tar Heels got off to yet another slow start in a series of slow starts this season. Their offensive line was bad; their rush defense was worse. Mack Brown coached like he wanted to make sure he wasn’t getting 4.5 gallons of mayonnaise dumped on him — which happened to winning South Carolina coach Shane Beamer — by skipping out on several fourth-down opportunities to go for it, choosing instead to either punt the ball or kick field goals. That took the ball out of the hands of his best player, Howell.
Howell didn’t play UNC’s final offensive series, either, after the Tar Heels once again fell behind by three scores. He ended the game 12 for 20 for 205 yards, with one touchdown pass and zero turnovers. He was sacked four times, and South Carolina kept his usually effective rushing game under wraps, too.
There’s no doubt that Howell is the best quarterback ever to play at UNC. He holds just about every record a QB can have. He ran and threw the ball with courage and talent. He gave the Tar Heels a chance in every game. Howell flipping from Florida State to UNC was an enormous boon for the football program.
But, to some extent, the Tar Heels wasted the Sam Howell years.
Yes, the Tar Heels stopped being embarrassing, as they were in Larry Fedora’s final two seasons. But UNC went only 7-6, 8-4 and 6-7 in Howell’s three seasons, getting to the Orange Bowl in that second season (but losing) and never making it to the ACC title game. UNC went a modest 21-17 overall in the three-year Howell era (assuming he doesn’t come back) because the rest of the team too often couldn’t match the type of performance Howell almost always gave.
This 2021 season was especially problematic. The Tar Heels began the season ranked No. 10 in the AP preseason poll and Howell in the Heisman Trophy conversation. But these final two games — ouch.
UNC ended the year with an all-time collapse against N.C. State on Nov. 26 and then a “couldn’t-stop-anybody” defensive debacle against the Gamecocks (7-6), who looked far more ready to play Thursday. South Carolina rushed for 301 yards and didn’t throw an incompletion until midway through the third quarter.
In 2019, when Howell made his collegiate debut for the Tar Heels in Bank of America Stadium after a record-setting career at Sun Valley High, I covered that game in person, too.
It was remarkable, as the kid from Indian Trail led late TD drives of 95 and 98 yards and UNC upset the Gamecocks, 24-20, in Charlotte. I wrote at the time that Howell made the best QB debut at Bank of America Stadium since Jake Delhomme came on at halftime of Week 1 against Jacksonville in 2003 and directed a comeback path that would eventually lead all the way to the Super Bowl.
UNC never got anywhere near that level as a team, though.
Brown said after this game that whenever Howell does decide to join the NFL that “some pro team is going to get really lucky.”
That’s true. Howell will be an excellent pro QB and will have a better career than Mitch Trubisky, who was somehow the No. 2 overall pick of the 2017 NFL draft.
As for that first Charlotte game way back in 2019, Howell fulfilled the promise that he first showed there as a freshman.
Howell is the real deal. But even with an NFL quarterback leading them, the Tar Heels too often weren’t.
