CHARLOTTE – It wasn’t as if Mack Brown and Chip Lindsey put on blindfolds, spun around a few times each, and then threw darts at a wall covered by photos of quarterbacks in the transfer portal to find a replacement for Drake Maye.
To some, that appears to somewhat be the case. To other, however, bringing Max Johnson from Texas A&M to North Carolina make a lot of sense for the Tar Heels and for Johnson. And it happened, in part, because of a slew of connections that made the decision fairly easy for everyone.
For starters, Johnson’s father, Brad Johnson, played 15 years in the NFL, winning a Super Bowl with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. His quarterbacks coach there one year was Clyde Christensen, a UNC alum and currently an analyst for the program.
There were others, too.
“Absolutely Clyde was a factor,” UNC Coach Mack Brown said during the Duke’s Mayo Bowl media day last week. “Mark Richt is their uncle, and Mark’s sister is their mother. And I’ve know Mark, and Mark knows a lot about our program. I’ve known Mark for years. Jim Donnan, who actually coached me at Florida State, is really good friends with the family. Then Clyde coaching (Brad) at Tampa Bay, there were a lot of ties that all led to them coming here.”
Richt is a former head coach at Georgia and Miami. Donnan, a former head coach at Marshall and Georgia, was an assistant at UNC in the 1970s and was once rumored as a head coaching candidate in Chapel Hill. He and Brown are such close friends they talk on the phone every week.
So, a lot of awareness, trust, and comfort went into Johnson and his younger brother, tight end Jake Johnson, becoming Tar Heels. Jake is also transferring in from A&M.
In eight games this past season before suffering an injury, Max Johnson was 118-for-190 passing with 1,452 yards, nine touchdowns and five interceptions. In 2022, he was 43-for-71 with 517 yards three scores and no picks. He was injured that year, too.
He went to A&M after spending two seasons at LSU, and in four college seasons, Johnson is 474-for-784 (60.5 percent) with 5,853 yards, 47 touchdowns, and 12 interceptions. He has two years of eligibility remaining because he gets the Covid year back, and redshirted in 2022.
“He’s 6-6, 230,” Brown said. “He’s a big presence. He’s very confident. He’s thrown over 900 passes in the SEC, he started at two different prominent schools, so he’s been in big games.”
Brown agreed there is a professional element to Johnson. He’s older now than Sam Howell or Drake Maye ever were when they took snaps. His upbringing makes him the football equivalent of a gym rat, but he’s also a film rat.
And, with Johnson having earned his degree, he practiced with the Tar Heels in Charlotte, getting in four workouts. In some respects, the battle for QB1 next fall is already underway.
“It’s fun to watch him, and he and Conner will be competing in the spring,” Brown said, also referring to Conner Harrell, who backed up Maye but started the bowl game. “So, it was good that all that gray’s out of the way. They’ve each other, they’ve met each other, and they’ve practiced together.”
Whoever wins that battle remains to be seen. But landing Johnson wasn’t UNC’s staff taking the first quarterback it could from the portal. It was much more than that.
