"Sam always gon' be Sam": Howell delivers best performance despite drops

Brown, teammates praise freshman quarterback

Brett Davis | USA TODAY Sports

ATLANTA — With all due respect, Sam Howell’s teammates weren’t blown away with his performance in North Carolina’s win over Georgia Tech.

Really, it’s no big deal when a true freshman quarterback completes a career-best 33 of 51 attempts for 376 yards with four touchdowns and one interception.

“Sam always gon’ be Sam,” receiver Dazz Newsome said in his Tidewater drawl. “I see it all the time; it’s not surprising to us.”

The Tar Heels have learned plenty over these first six games as they head into an open week at 3-3 with a real opportunity to make a bowl game, but most importantly, they’re set at quarterback through at least the 2021 season with Howell taking the snaps.

In two months, Howell has gone from battling for the job and battling the uncertainty that comes from leading in that position to the complete respect of his veteran teammates.

“Everybody on the team has faith in him, especially coming from a receiver standpoint,” receiver Beau Corrales said. “We’ve got all the trust in the world in the guy pulling the trigger, so it’s fun and its’ a confident feeling when you’ve got that kind of connection.”

The big-bodied Corrales, who had 18 catches for 220 yards and two touchdowns last season, has emerged as one of Howell’s reliable red zone targets with 19 catches for 213 yards and three touchdowns this season.

The connection isn’t limited to favorites though, as Howell completed passes to eight different players on Saturday as Dazz Newsome led the way with eight catches for 81 yards and a touchdown on 11 targets, with Dyami Brown just behind him at six catches for 77 yards and a touchdown on nine targets.

A few of the completions were highlight-reel plays, but it was the incompletions that tell the bigger story about Howell’s emergence as a leader for the Carolina offense.

Both Brown and Newsome dropped certain touchdown catches on Saturday, and there wasn’t a second of doubt in the quarterback.

“We drop a ball, Sam just says, ‘Don’t worry about it, I’m gonna come back to you,’” Newsome said.

Corrales has had his share of drops, too, and it’s all the same.

“He’s never gotten onto any of us,” he said. “It’s never anything negative; it’s always positive. This is stuff we work on all the time and whenever the drops do happen — which, we had way too many tonight — when they do happen, it’s a ‘Don’t blink,’ type of mentality. We always talk about that in our offense … that’s the only thing you’re going to hear from him, ‘Don’t blink and let’s get the next one.’”

After Saturday’s drops, that’s exactly what Howell did, finding Newsome across the middle and letting him make a play before putting a ball into the back corner of the end zone for Brown to make another stunning grab.

In all, Coach Mack Brown said it was the best game for his young gunslinger.

“He’s got so much composure,” Brown said. “He didn’t get a lot of help sometimes from his receivers, but they got better as the game went on.”

After watching Howell put up a career-high in yardage, Newsome’s only regret was that the number wasn’t higher.

“We catch all them balls, that’s another 200 yards,” he said.