North Carolina named Billy Edwards Jr. its starting quarterback for the Aug. 29 opener against TCU in Dublin, and the reflex is already showing up on draft boards. Naming a quarterback settles a depth chart. It does not fix an offense that couldn't run the ball last year.
Here's the honest read: the quarterback was never the biggest problem in Chapel Hill.
Last year, North Carolina's offense didn't work, and the run game was the worst part of it. Not inefficient. Worse than that. Handing the ball off was a losing transaction.
That's last season's team, and it should be read as trend, not prophecy. But nothing that came out of camp this week says the line got fixed or the run game found something. What we know is that they picked a quarterback.
What Edwards actually is
Edwards beat out Miles O'Neill, who has eight career appearances across two seasons. He's got one healthy full season as a Power-conference starter on the ledger: Maryland, 2024, 2,881 yards, 15 touchdowns, 9 interceptions, 6.9 yards per attempt. Solid. Unspectacular. The 2025 season at Wisconsin ended early with an injury that bought him a medical redshirt and a sixth year, which is how he ended up at his fourth school in six seasons.
He is a floor-raiser, he'll get you to third-and-manageable more often than the alternative. And the calendar isn't offering any warm-up. Neutral-site opener against TCU in Ireland, then a road trip to Clemson and Notre Dame at home behind it. If the line is what it was, that's where it gets exposed, and it gets exposed in the first month with everyone watching.
Diamond in the Rough
Fade the whole skill group with one name carved out: Jordan Shipp.
Shipp caught 60 balls for 671 yards and 6 touchdowns inside the worst version of this offense. Read that again — 60 catches came out of a unit that couldn't do much of anything. That's not a quarterback's production. That's a target share that survives whoever's under center, because somebody has to catch the ball and the offense already decided who. Volume earned in bad conditions is the most portable thing a receiver can own.